With their shaggy haircuts, tight pants, Tiger Beat good looks an a guest appearance on The O.C. , it would be easy to accuse Rooney of being an alt-rock boy band. Dismissing them as manufactured pretty boys might be even easier given vocalist Robert Carmine's Hollywood pedigree: his older brother, Rushmore actor Jason Schwartzman, used to drum for Phantom Planet. Still, there's something Partridge Family-wholesome about the Los Angeles quintet's retrofitting that makes its sunny chords and lovelorn songs impossible to resist. Perhaps it's the tunes, which shamelessly rip off other rock bands without appearing too derivative. "Blueside" is a blowsy, Stereophonics-like pub-rock doppelganger, "If It Were Up to Me" comes from the Weezer school of midtempo fuzz-rock, and "I'm a Terrible Person" and "I'm Shakin'" zip along like vintage new-wave power-pop nuggets stuck in skinny-tie purgatory. Such endearing appeal also extends to the exuberant Rooney live experience, which is filled with as much innocent, fresh-faced rocking out as an Oxy 10 commercial and a Saved By the Bell episode wrapped up into one.
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