Whoa, JoBros! Nobody wanted to bring up Taylor Swift, but the best song on your new album vows, "I'm done with superstars/And all the tears on her guitar." Snapness! JoMG BroMG! Not only do the boys zap "Teardrops on My Guitar," the famous hit by Joe Jonas' most famous ex, there's also "World War III" (about girls who drop the bomb on you), "Paranoid" (rhymes with "consider me destroyed") and "What Did I Do to Your Heart" ("All I ever get is attitude"). Clearly, the gods of love have harshed upon the Bros. Play this back-to-back with Taylor's Fearless, and you get two sides of a teen romance for our times.

The boys continue to expand musically, making this their kickiest and catchiest CD yet, even better than last year's A Little Bit Longer. "Much Better" is a superb bit of Motown-inspired moppet-funk, with some very 1985 synth-horn blasts. (Producer John Fields has Andrew W.K. on his résumé, but he seems to believe the peak of sonic perfection is Huey Lewis' "The Power of Love.") They write their own tunes, showing off the tricks they learned from their Stevie Wonder and Neil Diamond albums, trying U2-style rock, country and Eighties hair metal. But the weirdest moment has to be "Don't Charge Me With the Crime," a gangsta-rap tale with police sirens, machine guns and guest star Common. Even if the Bros aren't having any luck handling girls, they do better with guitars — and that just puts them in a long rock & roll tradition.