The Corrs

In Blue (Atlantic/Lava)

Ireland (and, since I am of Irish extraction, I know whereof I speak) is not a country known for producing pretty people. Enter the Corrs. The four siblings (Andrea, Sharon, Caroline and, least excitingly, Jim) decided to form a band in 1991 based on their musical influences, which they claimed to be pop and traditional Celtic music. To be honest, their Celtic streak was never very strong, and their pop was mediocre to say the least, but the international community embraced them, catapulting them to giant stardom. Americans, while buying the album enough to make it successful, didn't quite embrace them in the all-senses media-assault way that is the top of the pyramid in modern musical success. Perhaps the American audience was leery of a band that even had pretensions at involving folk music in their sound.

Luckily for the Corrs and their producers, identity, the bane of large-scale success, has been surgically removed from the Corrs in time for their third album, In Blue. Already, the Corrs have begun to construct an international cult of fantastically loyal adolescent males and pre-adolescent girls, who will no doubt flood from such competitors as Britney Spears to send them up the charts. The promo literature on the Corrs still makes much of the Celtic streak in their tunes, but that has been steamrolled over by a synthetic, processed sound. And, believe me, this is pop with two capital Ps, and a capital O thrown in for good measure. In Blue is to music what Last Action Hero was to cinema: the apotheosis of a certain kind of mindless cookie-cutter workmanship, like Warhol without the ironic distance. The only track on the album that doesn't just shriek with brain-bursting insignificance is the instrumental last track, "Rebel Heart." The fiddle from previous Corr albums is back, albeit surrounded by the same MIDI-file accompaniment that infests the rest of this God-forsaken album. "Rebel Heart" is worse than, say, the least interesting track on the Braveheart soundtrack, but at least it's not an embarrassment before God and Nature.

The reason for the Corrs' large-scale success to date (as well as in the foreseeable future) is that the three sisters are, to put it simply, gorgeous. Movie-star gorgeous. Stab-your-friend-in-the-back-for-their-smile gorgeous. And, yes, buy-their-assembly-line-trash-music gorgeous. Fight the impulse; if you must gaze at the Corrs, buy a poster, not their album. It's easier to stare at them when that bad pop music isn't distracting you anyhow.

C

-Matt Callahan