Pornosonic

Pornosonic’s Cream Streets seems like a good enough idea at first — if some literary types read Playboy for the articles, then some music fans probably watch ’70s porn for the songs — but the fun stops prematurely. Cream Streets takes all the classic elements of porn rock (talk box, synthesizers and wah-wah pedals) and overindulges like a Gen X-er on his first trip to the thrift shop. Most of the songs start with promise — a Jethro Tull-style heavy-metal intro here, a Gil Scott-Heron-type tribal intro there — but soon Pornosonic runs into the limitations presented by porn soundtracks. Good skin flicks require music flashy enough to grab viewers at the beginning but noninvasive enough to fade into the background when it’s time to, um, move on to something else. In that regard, Pornosonic’s mission succeeds because its tunes are as catchy yet mundane as the real porn numbers. However, this approach doesn’t have the stamina to withstand fifteen songs in 45 minutes. Without tawdry images to distract listeners from the third, fourth or fifth guitar, synth or sax solo, Cream Streets becomes too much like one of the films its tracks were designed to support: full of tired setups that become self-indulgent before the inevitable big ending.