The question ultimately is: "Does this sound like Jeremy Renner?" It's his album, so conceivable it does, but what quality does that sound take? Does it match in some way how he carries himself on screen? Is there more truth to be found in the core of the man here than in, say, his portrayal of William Brandt in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol?
At times, Renner sounds like an ad for Chevy Truck Month, a last-gasp cock-rocker whose primary influence seems to be Muse or Imagine Dragons (did you know that Fieldy, the bass player for KoЯn, once cited the Red Hot Chili Peppers as the band's primary influence, calling them "our Beatles"? I bet Jeremy would find that fact interesting). Elsewhere, arguably more successfully, he sounds like a complete adult-contemporary generic, the kind of artist that makes a decent living on the club circuit and might show up for a 10 AM performance on Good Morning America, someone with the arm of a record label behind him but without any real hope of significant penetration in the youth market. Other times—and I'm talking specifically about the EPs title track here—he sounds like soft-rock Kid Rock, which sucks because there already is a soft-rock Kid Rock and his name is Kid Rock. He can't really sing, but he'd be the best guy in your church choir, the fourth-best guy on karaoke night. It's fine.
The best compliment I can pay the machinery of this music is that once it gets rolling, it does its job of moving downhill. It is a ping-pong ball, smooth and reflective and empty and kinetic, without a personality to speak for it or a flaw to mar it. It could be anyone, which might be the ultimate kindness once can say of an actor's vanity music project. Washed free of the reality that this is the dude from The Town, he sounds just as mundane as anyone else. The stars really are just like us.
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