Reviews: The Click Five, Hilary Duff

Reviews: The Click Five, Hilary Duff

The Click Five 'Greetings From The Imrie House': Aidin Vaziri | The Click Five are a boy band with a difference. They play their own instruments, write their own songs and grew up listening to Kiss instead of the Jackson 5. They wear their hair like the Byrds, not like a flock of birds just went whooshing by. And rather than collaborating with Swedish androids for their debut album, the graduates of Boston's Berklee College of Music enlisted producer Mike Deneen, whose previous clients include the entirely credible Fountains of Wayne and Aimee Mann. Despite the fact that the Five served as opening act for both Ashlee Simpson and the Backstreet Boys, their "Greetings From the Imrie House" seems a little smarter than the average teen- pop disc, making sure that when its bubblegum blows, it goes, "Bang!"

Hilary Duff 'Most Wanted': Aidin Vaziri | Neil Young had to wait a decade before he got his. David Bowie's came after reinventing his sound and persona nine times. And it took Aretha Franklin about 12 years to get one. That must make Hilary Duff -- who has released just two studio albums and is not even old enough to vote -- better than all of them combined. Her first greatest-hits set arrives this week, and if the saccharine-and-synth rush of tracks like "Fly," "The Getaway" and her spin on the Go-Go's "Our Lips Are Sealed" seems particularly fresh, well, that's because it is -- most of these songs came out less than a year ago on the singer's self-titled sophomore release. Fortunately, the former "Lizzie McGuire" star's boyfriend, Joel Madden from Good Charlotte, steps in with three new tracks, including the let's-get-the-party-started single "Wake Up," that help alleviate the feeling that this is a total cash grab.