Philadelphia Weekly

MUSIC

Week's Worst: Better Than Ezra

By Chris Parker

Add Comment | Comments: 3 | Posted Dec. 8, 2010

The most insidious thing about Better Than Ezra is their innocuousness: They possess a bland regularity to rival institutional food. Lightweight and disposable, they’re like a package with nothing inside. For three guys from New Orleans, you’d expect a bit more soul and less sterile plasticity, then again it is Modern ®ock. Led by Kevin Griffin’s smooth mannered croon—a sugary confection that goes down (on you) like Rob Thomas—they’re effortlessly amiable and shallow as a reflecting pool. Sure there’s some narrative piffle about lost friends, lovers and good times, but nothing that compares to the feeling of loss experienced awakening in their garden of wrappers and Styrofoam refuse realizing you could’ve had a real meal if you hadn’t anaesthetized your taste buds on their saccharine swill. Like a disease with no cure, they’ll make three and a half minutes feel like a lifetime.

Fri., Dec. 10, 9pm. $32.25. With Big Sam’s Funky Nation. Theater of Living Arts, 334 South St. 215.922.1011. livenation.com