For those unfamiliar with intermediate local band history, fivestartheory is Higher Step Records’ flagship band, taking various members from Olive Lucy and nice guys finish last. And 5st works as a perfect hybrid of the two bands by canceling out each other’s bad traits: Olive Lucy’s erratic ability to excessively expand on a simple root, and ngfl.’s amiable and amateurish ability to make a sincere parody. But flaws remain nonetheless; fivestar’s music has the mindlessly colloquial romanticism of early Beatles, but wants that hip indie classification. There’s still that embarrassingly sappy amateurishness that permeates YLiPB (lines like “Follow your dreams /  They’re all you have,” “Life goes on!” and “Her lips against me / I think that I could die!”; the prom balladry of “February Nine”). Is the sensitive boys trapped in guitar band just a front? Do they really carry their hearts on their sleeves this much? Are they just in love with being in love? Or (worst of all), are they in love with writing songs about being in love? While the theory of pop-emotionalism is nothing new, this indie charge flutters it. Notice the words in the band name uncapitalized and pushed together? It gives that feeling of being too exasperated and emotionally spent to even worry about grammar, right?

It’s cheap sentiments, a worship of boy-bands and their impersonal craft that give fivestartheory its identity/burden. It’s a band that placates to the music elite, that reads the music trades, that desperately tries to understand the thesaurus-flashin’-critic’s appraisal of their favorite bands (the band name’s a reference to five star reviews that represent the rock critic Mecca). And they spend so much time trying to figure out how to squeeze into the rock star phenomena, they forget to be a band.

But for these abundant flaws, Your Life is Passing By may very well be the first local recording that gets that goes beyond the just-get-it-on-tape mentality, and has the a pristine version of 5st’s music; it seems like a genuine improvement. Their erratic live show is melded with a nice pop sensibility (why do I get the feeling that some of the band members are skimming this review just to see the phrase “pop sensibility”?) which glazes over their live structural excesses. Credit for most of this goes to the production of Bob Renock, Evansville’s own Max Martin and the most consistently involved patron of the local all-ages music scene for the last decade. The recording is far from perfect (more backing vocals could’ve thickened Ryan Bernhardt and Leo Kempf’s vocals), but Renock’s fully embraced the pop rule of the loud drum sound. And Aaron Distler’s competent inventiveness gives Renock the proper opportunity to showcase this recording ideology.

Fivestartheory unabashedly like pop music, and that’s a statement that while most are too embarrassed to say too often, songwriter/bass player Tim Lockridge will gladly carry as a dictum. They embrace the triumphant pop music you’d hear playing over the credits of some teen movie as Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze, Jr. finally kiss. They have no qualms about being the world’s first emo-boy-band. But as for that five star (clef) review, keep trying guys.