Not many budding 15-year-old rock deities become the subject of 10-page New Yorker profiles before their debut albums are so much as in the record stores. In years to come, Texan Wunderkind Ben Kweller may look back on the hype surrounding his three-piece band, Radish, and shudder.

Restraining Bolt smells like teen spirit, all right, but is it the future of rock & roll? Most of it doesn't sound like the future of anything much. The album is bulging with generic grunge riffs and jejune lyrics delivered in a throaty juve-punk voice, all beefed up with ugly slabs of Stiff Little Fingers guitar. The lead track, "Little Pink Stars," is Nirvana by numbers – Kweller's very own "Teen Spirit," in fact – and the hand-wringing "Still I Wait" and "Dear Aunt Arctica" (about church burning and Montana Freemen, no less) are hopelessly callow, even for a supposed idiot savant with attention-deficit disorder.

Three or four songs hint at the future greatness that Kweller's record label is banking on. The chorus of "Failing and Leaving" is just gorgeous, and there are pretty changes and refrains on "Sugar Free" and "A Promise." With its angsty high school narrative, "Failing and Leaving" doesn't say anything the Descendents didn't say better 15 years ago, but it's oddly moving – more than can be said for "Apparition of Purity," a song whose title could be construed as a coy reference to Kweller's own supposed innocence.

Maybe the album's co-producer Paul Kolderie came a little closer to the truth about the boy wonder: "He's just a talented, bright kid who has watched a lot of MTV." Indeed. (RS 762)

BARNEY HOSKYNS