Christofer Drew Ingle has a reputation he just can’t seem to shake. He burst onto the scene as Never Shout Never in 2008 with a brand of uber-cutesy pop that seemed to instantly garner him a throng of teengirl fans; he’s spent the last two years running away from both the genre and the following as fast as he can. There was a countrified twist on his core sound with 2010’s Harmony; a so-bad-it’s-past-good-and-back-around-to-bad screamo/hardcore album under the name Eatmewhileimhot!; threats in interviews to drop the NSN moniker entirely; and now, a full fledged jump into psychedelia titled Time Travel.

Time Travel is a drug album. More specifically, it’s a “look at me, I do drugs, see all the crazy drugs I take!” album. It’s as much about public image redefinition as it is about entheogenic revelation. Ingle goes so far as to as to name check LSD and E on the album’s opening and title track, a lame straight-out-of-Erowid trip-travelogue that comes unmoored at the four minute mark and features one of the most cringe-worthy couplets (“I learned that the sun // was no fun”) he’s written. (Considering the verbal naïveté of some of his early work, that’s saying quite a bit). “Complex Heart” sandwiches a lyrical nod to one of the most lysergic moments in The Beatles’s catalog between dissonant piano stomps and 70’s prog-worthy power chords. And “Silver Ecstasy”’s name references drugs explicitly. Dude, we get it already. 

Time Travel’s best moments are those where Ingle’s prodigious gifts for melody and songcraft outstrip the artificial limitations he’s imposed on them here. “Robot” curls an arena-worthy ballad into closer confines, its sparkly synths buried in the mix, twittering away in the background in waltz time. Single “Simplistic Trance-Like Getaway,” if you can get past its silly titular refrain, is a slice of breezy, buoyant pop with a killer chorus and a recurring guitar riff that pleasantly recalls The Cars’s masterwork “It’s All I Can Do”. And “Until I Die Alone” is as good as anything Ingle’s written to date, a beautiful sweet-and-sour pop song with a draggy beat that lugs and lurches behind the melody like a gimpy leg, hazy psych-pop done right.

Ultimately, Time Travel seems less about what Christofer Drew Ingle is and more about what he’s not; the fact that he might actually be a stoner now doesn’t make the record seem any less calculated. If Time Travel is ultimately the album that disgorges his teen idol rep, it won’t be because he seems more dangerous, but because nobody likes being manipulated so transparently. It’s a shame: the end result is a collection of decent-to-excellent parts—certain lyrics aside—that add up to less than they should. The problem with trying too hard is that naked ambition shows through; next time, lay off the acid and take a chill pill.

★★.5/★★★★★

*This review was composed by Jesse Richman