Vicki Cicala

If this is a real record — meaning it didn’t come as a free gift with my flare jeans purchase from Wet Seal in 1995 — then it’s rather alarming that someone would make something like this in 2010. This EP is filled with brain-jarring cliché after flippant cliché, beyond-formulaic songs about love and the heartache that comes with the desire to be set free by love. Worse, the clichés aren’t even relevant: “My Beloved” is like an Evanescence track left on the studio floor a decade ago, complete with forlorn whines from a telephone receiver, the softened jut-jutting of what has to be a “metal guitar” loop in Garageband, and the literal tick-tock sound of a clock before Cicala sings “Tick-tock from the clock reminds me that you’re gone.” If you’re wondering why women are still fighting an uphill battle to be taken seriously as artists, look no further.