Artist: The Used Album: The Used (Reprise Records)

The Used -- Bert McCracken (vocals), Branden Steineckert (drums/vocals), Quinn Allman (guitar/vocals) and Jeph Howard (bass/vocals) -- made it out of Mormon country in Orem, Utah, to release this self-titled debut album.

And as far as self-titled debut albums go, this one's not bad. Which, of course, is another way to say it's not good.

The Used throw everything into the pot, mix it all together, and what you get is an album that is a lot of different things, but in the end nothing really at all.

When McCracken gets to screaming, the band sounds kinda hard and intense, like At the Drive-In only not as good, as on the track A Box Full of Sharp Objects. Then they slow it down on a track like Blue and Yellow and try to get lyrical. Unfortunately, they do both of these things only marginally well.

Of course, more interesting than the music is McCracken's relationship with Kelly Osbourne. The pair dated (Osbourne says she loved him) before The Used made it big, and once they did McCracken dumped Osbourne. That would make her the used, and The Used the users.

Even if this album is only somewhat good (and it does have flashes of potential) you should buy it anyway, because McCracken deserves all the success he can get after dating Osbourne.

-- Harry Dean