Drum Roll, please! Brmmmmmmmmm... Let me introduce you to the The Click Five and their new album Modern Minds and Pastimes

Now I know some of you are already familiar with the band and their music, especially if "Just a Girl" is still on your iPod playlist. But for those who have never heard of the band or if you just simply have "heard of them", let me give you a bit of a background about who the Five are; besides a refresher is always good.

Straight out of Boston, Massachusetts, the band debuted onto the music scene in 2005 with Greetings from Imrie House, which placed 15 on the Billboard 200. The album was the year's highest-charting debut from a new rock band, according to The Click Five's press release. Their most memorable song of the record was "Just the Girl", which with its intensely uppity, feel-good lyrics always gets your blood pumping. Thus it's a perfect song to exercise to, not that I'm speaking from experience or anything.  The band members are: Joe Guese - lead guitar; vocals, Ethan Mentzer - bass, vocals; Kyle Patrick - vocals, rhythm guitar; Ben Romans &- keyboards, vocals; and Joey Zehr - drums, vocals.

With the days of "Just the Girl" behind them, the band has grown and in their new album they started to experiment musically with their personal musical heroes as the driving force. As Ben Romans states in the press release, "The puzzle is breaking it [lyrics] down to its pure essence. Lyricism is minimalist, and I like the challenge of writing pop music. It's modern art, like Rothko, in blocks, instead of doing an Impressionist painting." And I have to say that their new album is just that: modern, different, and definitely much more acoustically mature.

Each song is an individual, but interestingly as a whole the songs mix well with one another. The transitioning between tracks is very well done, making the listening enjoyable, instead of that "Dear God, what's this?" that makes your ears hurt. The lyrics are like Romans said: Art. Poetic in nature, they are creative, fun where fun ought to be had, and meaningful when there is need to carry emotion with them.