The best thing about the new album, “The Golden Hum,” by Remy Zero is that there are only 11 songs. Any more than that and the listener would probably be driven to insanity.

This frustration is rooted in the fact that Remy Zero always seems to straddle the line between inventive, interesting music and standard pop-music fluff.

It is easy to hear two distinct influences when listening to the band: Radiohead and U2.

The experimentation of Radiohead can be heard creeping in the background, but Remy Zero backs off before they begin to really stray from the conventional.

Then there is the band?s obvious desire to emulate the soulful sounds of U2, but they forget one thing: they aren?t U2. When Bono sings with melancholy into the microphone, he sounds sincere and torn about his feelings.

When Remy Zero does this, they sound like a band trying to sound like U2.The best example can be heard on their first single, “Save Me,” a song destined for heavy radio play. The bellowing vocals beg for credibility, hoping that if the vocals are loud enough, the listeners will believe them to be sincere.

Their sound is soft; they never venture into anything too intense. Now and then, they feel the need to use their electric guitars. “Over the Hills of Hollywood High,” (oh, how profound) with its delightfully trite lyrics, is a good example.

The one thing the band proves to excel at is their ability to milk a chorus. Very few songs on “The Golden Hum” lack chorus repetition ? and repetition and repetition.

There is nothing on this album that is new or remarkable. It is simply a bunch of tried and true techniques that have been done with the aid of a skilled producer and the money of a large record label to fund it.

Two out of four stars.