REVIEW: New Daughtry CD ‘Leave This Town’ –Is Chris Still Idol’s Top Rocker?

Following up on the success of his post-American Idol debut album, Chris Daughtry and his eponymous band are back for a second shot at the spotlight–and they’re bringing that annoying guy from Nickelback with them.

For whatever it’s worth, Chris Daughtry is actually a better singer than Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger.

Considering the fact that Daughtry’s vocals could often be mistaken for Nickelback karaoke, pairing him with Kroeger is redundant, but it also means that the song they co-wrote, “No Surprise,” (listen below) is an easy fit with the rest of Daughtry’s easy-to-swallow (or ignore) radio rock sound.

“I practiced this for hours / Gone round and round/ And now I think that I’ve got it all down/ And as I’m sing it louder/ Love how it sounds,” sings Daughtry on “No Surprise.” Practiced, perhaps overly-practiced, is a good way to describe the soullessly glossy song. From the acoustic opening riff, to the big chorus and the late-song build-up, the formula seems to be set in stone.

As for rock?

There’s nothing about this mid-tempo pop that differentiates it from anything being produced by Katy Perry or the Jonas Brothers or any other pop star on the radio right now.  In addition to the Nickelback track, the songs were co-written with members of the Click Five, Three Days Grace, Lifehouse and Evanescence/We Are the Fallen, guaranteeing the album a professionally-crafted pop-rock sound that sounds like it was written in a boardroom rather than a motel room or tour bus.

Hell, with its mellow intro and rave-up chorus, fellow Idol also-ran Clay Aiken’s “Invisible” is every bit as “rock” as anything on Daughtry’s CD-a fact Daughtry might not find pleasing.

Leave This Town is only “rock” because of Daughtry’s jeans, silly facial hair and the fact that he had a more rocker-like persona than Idol co-stars Taylor Hicks and Katherine McPhee. (Seriously, shaved head and carefully sculpted beard-thing? Enough, already.)

At best, Daughtry’s acoustic-rock might aspire to be the sort of workingman arena-rock of Bon Jovi, but it comes closer to the emptiness of Staind. Fans of this genre won’t be disappointed, and Daughtry’s new batch of songs will without a doubt end up topping the charts in the weeks and months to come, particularly the new ballad, “September.” Daughtry’s similarly soft pairing with country star Vince Gill on “Tennessee Line” is one of his better moments–maybe he should follow Carrie Underwood’s path to country stardom? Maybe not.

The rest of Leave This Town sounds, well, a lot like the last Daughtry album-a fact that will please loyalists, but (hopefully) fail to win over new fans.

After selling millions of copies of his debut, Daughtry seems to have a solid fanbase behind him-assuming, of course, that they haven’t jumped ship in favor of the new Idol “rockers” Adam Lambert and David “State Fair” Cook-remember him? Didn’t think so.

Daughtry’s Leave This Town hits stores in July 14, but you can get a preview:

LISTEN: Daughtry-”No Surprise”