After driving on the highway with Holmes’s album Stop Go coursing through my car’s radio, a friend lowered the music and had this to say about the CD: "It’s... benign."

I thought it was an appropriate description for Stop Go. Holmes lays down a decent foundation for a first try, but that’s about it. Imagine a blander and less skilled Ben Folds, with a marked lack in passion. Perhaps it is lead singer’s Roy Shakked’s average voice, or the uninspired and misused band talent (you would think that Electric Light Orchestra’s Sarah O’Brien would have contributed in a far more powerful way than, say, the cello hook on "Gray World"). Either way, more feeling or direction would not have harmed Holmes’s first album appearance in the limelight (they have an EP out).

Stop Go is bookended by the best songs on the album: The upbeat and colorful "Five Days A Week" does just enough to fool you into listening to the album; the nostalgic instrumental "Daydream No. 57" tricks you into thinking that the whole album was a good listen. Yet there are no other songs that truly stand out as particularly innovative, or even catchy. The meat of the album is indeed a "Gray World," almost "Nothing At All," like the song titles imply. Yet somehow Holmes manages just enough to leave you with the hope that future albums could be the type that catalyzes the listener from a passive to active state, one in which the music engages the ears.

For now, Stop Go indeed falls under the "benign" category-neither attractive nor offensive. Roy Shakked will have to dig a little deeper to find the spark that can transform an average album into a good one.