On The Outs

Frankie O'Malley, The Safes (Photos: Brushback)Sometimes a band isn't much more than the sum of their influences, and while The Safes tread dangerously close to that point, I'm willing to give them a pass on it for now. I'm thinking the titles they pick out for their CDs are pretty stupid, too, but I'm not sure that stupid CD titles are anything that anybody really cares about (lots of people still buy Bon Jovi records, right?).From reading the press they get, you'd think The Safes are awash in British Invasion influences-- the band itself owns up to this to some degree-- but if there's a breadcrumb trail back to the likes of The Beatles and The Kinks, it probably owes itself more to the glossy production on their most recent album, "Well Well Well", than anything else. "Bad Blood" sounds like nothing if not T. Rex, sure, and the cleverly layered vocals on "Only In Your Mind" blow away anything the Posies ever tried; but like...