Blue Man Group

One has to be skeptical about the merits of a performance-art troupe that plays Las Vegas, frequently appears on The Tonight Show and garners gushing reviews from USA Today and Time. Now, Blue Man Group might be an awesome spectacle in the azure-tinted flesh, but I can judge them only on the music and video encoded on The Complex. Blue Man Group deserves respect for inventing its own instruments, but why go to all that trouble to create such utterly characterless music? And when you’re as well connected as this group, why enlist dullards such as Tracy Bonham and Bush’s Gavin Rossdale to sing your flavorless songs? Even the contributions of renowned turntablists Dan the Automator and Rob Swift are negligible. Only Nels Cline’s piquant guitar makes The Complex worth a spin. The rest of this dud, including a heinous cover of “White Rabbit,” will make listeners see red.