The Irish quintet The Thrills is about the worst-named band in the history of the world. Their music is about as thrilling as a slow-motion picnic with the cast of Antique Roadshow, and the band would be more accurately titled The Happy Valley Orchestral Gang instead of the monosyllabic title that is reminiscent of bands like The Strokes, The Hives or Jet.

At least their first album, So Much for the City, was bearable due to upbeat, chipper tunes like “Big Sur” and “One-horse Town.” However, their sophomore release, Let’s Bottle Bohemia, transformed a band built on fun summer beach songs into a reedy, saccharine waste of time.

The album opens with the forgettable “Tell me something I don’t know.” It starts with a dirty guitar sound and hand-clap percussion that would almost make you think it was good old-fashioned Irish garage rock…until lead singer Conor Deasy chimes in with a raspy little-boy voice that seems to be trying just a tad too hard, and a few “ooh” and “ahh”-ing background singers that must have been abducted from the Beach Boys’ early years. Needless to say, the transplant is unfortunate.

After nearly four minutes of whining monotony, the boy band progresses to track two, the slightly more tuneful “Whatever happened to Corey Haim?” Once again, The Thrills attempt to straddle the pace of harsher rock and soft-pop orchestral stylings, and they ultimately fall into a painful area in-between. The lyrics follow the party-hardy style of The Strokes or other new rock bands, but the music is still rooted in lush musical imagery and a soft-rock piano accompaniment. Somehow it is hard to listen to the aggressive lyrics, “So let’s stay out tonight/I just can’t stop it/I just can’t stop it/Ooh, girl I say ooh,” when it is sung without voice inflection or tone, and the background music is furious scales played by an army of violins. Instead of sounding hard-core, it just provokes pity: they try so hard, but they sound so lame!

The soothing “Not for all the love in the world” stands out as the sole success story of the album. The band seems to find their place as nostalgic soft rock, and they play it up with a slower beat and piano score that brings to mind Coldplay’s “Trouble.” Lyrics such as “You show your age /when you drown your rage./But I see past those laughter lines” show a bittersweet and nuanced side of The Thrills that seems hidden in their other songs. And then after that four-minute interlude, the album returns to its quest of sucking as much as is humanely possible.

At their best The Thrills are an easy-listening beach band; at their worst, they are wannabe rockers with a sickly sweet sound. They definitely provide an alternative to the bitter, angsty teen anthems of modern music, but their style goes much too far in the opposite direction. All in all, save yourself a headache and ten bucks, and leave “Let’s Bottle Bohemia” on the shelf.