The new Thrills’ album Teenager, released last week, needs to grow up. One of the first songs to emerge, the title track “Teenager,” sets the pace for the rest of the album’s melancholic journey through adolescent relationships and love.

The band makes a traditional jig rock, causing the indie portions to sound slow. The first song of the album, “Midnight Choir,” illustrates the fusion of rock, Irish jigs and indie. The cultural sound is perhaps one of the band’s more mature qualities as a traditional sound is morphed into something that today’s youth might find appealing.

However, the five-member band brings little energy or creativity to this album.

The first few songs are slightly more upbeat and lively than the rest.

They explore the problems of getting a job, keeping a girl, and having to cope with the many problems associated with the two.

The remaining tracks have lyrics that are just as repetitive as the baselines.

Although the band recorded this album in a different studio than the previous albums-So Much for the City in 2003 and Let’s Bottle Bohemia in 2004-which were recorded in California, it seems the new site may have given the band more spooks than inspiration.

The Thrills recorded in the Warehouse studio in Canada, which had been a makeshift morgue before being converted to a studio and is supposedly haunted.

On an indie-rock standard, this album ranks about average. There are a variety of instruments: bass, guitar, keys, harmonica, mandolin and a banjo.

However, there is no variety in the pace, subject matter, or dynamics of the music.

The incorporation of many instruments and influences from the members’ culture gives them an opportunity to make original sounding music.

Yet, the band fails to celebrate this aspect of originality because a forlorn and repetitive tone persists through the album.

Even when the final song, “There’s Joy to be Found…The Boy Who Caught All the Breaks,” comes along it does not get any more cheery.

Even if you do not mind the glum content about humdrum teenage life and moving beyond it, the lack of energy makes it hard to be excited about the music.

In the past, The Thrills have played in some of the world’s biggest venues and hobnobbed with the likes of U2, REM and Oasis.

But when you have a song titled “Long Forgotten Song” and the keyboardist stays on the same note the entire song what else might happen but for it to be forgotten?

If nothing else, the album is soothing and the indie-rock tunes are catchy.

Pick up a copy and give it a listen.