The Forecast? Cloudy with a chance of indie pop from our outgrown high school playlists. Be sure to pack an umbrella, because the superficiality is going to accumulate in a torrential downpour.

The new album from The Forecast (their third and self-titled) comes heavy with a constant tone and does little to garner attention to itself. Even lyrically, The Forecast leaves a lot to be desired. The straightforward storytelling format of the album relies all too much on clichés, for example: “Remember all the memories we made/like dancing in the rain.” Even titles like, “Life’s a Garden, Dig it” and “Double on the Rocks” are painful stabs at poeticism that ultimately fail. Sometimes you can get away with all that, but it’s rare even in circumstances where the musicianship is right.

The group has been kicking around the music scene since 2001 and originates from small-town Illinois, where they gained a following through playing alongside big names in the business like Motion City Soundtrack. The truth is that this album is almost completely indistinguishable amongst the mainstream indie/emo bands that have filtered in and out for the past decade. The Forecast is just plain boring in the same way a lot of Christian rock and over-played hits from 2005 are; there’s just nothing refreshing about it.

Not all is lost, however. There are momentary glimpses of a turn-around that never quite materializes. The opening number, “Losers,” has a nice acoustic soft touch and a tavern-esque echo, but it’s only a minute long and immediately followed by the dribble described above. And the track, “If I’m Not Mistaken,” features Shannon Burns on lead vocals, which is a welcome mix-up but soon meets the same low caliber of the rest of the album and quickly blends in with the same pitch and blandness of everything else.

Unless you’re in the mood for reality TV soundtrack music that finds itself among discount compilation discs, you might pass The Forecast up for another day.

(Eyeball Records, PO Box 400, Ridgewood, NJ 07451)