Fitz and the Tantrums

Ultimately, while Fitz & the Tantrums' contemporary dance-pop sound is decades away from the aesthetic of their debut, it works, and it's hard to imagine fans not wanting to take make the leap with them.

The band’s glossiest record yet seems geared toward merging its brassy, retro-glam aesthetic with a commercial-minded agenda. For a time it succeeds, meting out earworms with take-no-prisoners rapidity. Eventually, though, Fitz’s mainstream pop ambitions outpace its once-emblematic sense of funk (and fun).

It’s the residue of that band making a cynical attempt to polish the gloss off their music to a dull matte to the benefit of the lowest common denominator of pop listeners.

It's a self-titled affair but it lacks the calling cards that originally made them interesting.

Fitz and the Tantrums is an album that feels, by some bizarre paradox, like both a product of contemporary market forces and a depressing relic of an era of the music industry best forgotten.