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Fifth Harmony charms and frustrates on debut album

The great thing about prefab bands is that they can be whatever you want them to be. They can surf any trend, fill any niche, bend to any Top 40 desire. Things like "artistry" or "talent" are abstractions that do not trouble them. They will never try to make you believe that their sound "evolved organically." They exist to be present-day hit machines, to be assembled into that thing you like right this at very moment.

Fifth Harmony exists simply because Simon Cowell wanted a distaff, American version of One Direction and didn't have one yet. The members were assembled in much the same way as their British cousins: Five individual "X Factor" washouts were joined together by Cowell mid-competition and eventually placed third. (Tate Stevens won. Don't feel bad if you don't remember him. For the record, he was the one with the cowboy hat.)

Fifth Harmony released a successful EP, "Better Together," in the fall of 2013 but otherwise seemed unable to capitalize on their "X Factor" bronze. Their official full-length debut, the ridiculously pleasing and often just ridiculous "Reflection," arrived a momentum-dampening two years after their "X" season ended.

Yet the group's appeal has only grown stronger in their absence, defying precedent. They're suddenly famous in ways that usually evade contestants on second-tier reality shows, for reasons that may have little to do with them and more to do with the unsated public need for a girl group - any girl group.

It's unthinkable now, but in the late '90s, the Spice Girls, TLC, En Vogue and Destiny's Child all roamed the Earth at roughly the same time. The '00s and '10s were a vacuum, as if some invisible comet had taken out the girl group's natural habitat. All that remained were outliers such as Little Mix (little known in America), HAIM (technically more of a girl band), the Pussycat Dolls and Danity Kane (who sold millions of albums yet seemed to have few fans).

The most interesting thing about Fifth Harmony isn't "Reflection," which is charming and frustrating and bloated in turn, but how its below-the-line makers, who are mostly men, have fashioned it into a minor oracle of received girl group wisdom. In both its attitude and its material, the album reflects almost every way those acts have changed in the past 15 years, and every way they've stayed the same.

Most of the songs are midtempo, R&B-minded pop tracks that occasionally flirt with EDM and hip-hop. "Sledgehammer" is a solid '80s club-pop throwback, one of several co-written by "All About That Bass" hitmaker Meghan Trainor; "Like Mariah" is one of a handful of songs that scrape the bottom of the Carey songbook and comes up with choice material. Prime, mid-'90s Mariah was until now a criminally underutilized resource ripe for the pilfering; "Like Mariah" samples "Always Be My Baby" so thoroughly, Carey gets a co-writing credit.

Not every track works. Even at a slim 40-ish minutes, "Reflection" creaks under its own weight. The longer it goes on, the more it becomes evident that its components, and the women who deliver them, were mostly assembled by older men, in keeping with the ways older men think young women speak. Every song seems to come with an imaginary #RealTalk hashtag, none more so than the abominable title track, which offers more proof, as if it were necessary, that no one should ever write a song referencing the Internet: "Don't need no filters on pictures before you post 'em on the 'gram /Shut down the Internet/They don't even understand."

The women of Fifth Harmony all have solidly lovely voices, though they sometimes seem to mistake singing together at the same time for harmonizing. But their personalities are shallowly drawn, without benefit of even the usual pretty/sporty/cool girl pencil-drawn archetypes.

You'll have to fill in the blanks yourself: Who is the Michelle Williams, the one all the other girls will ignore at the cruise ship reunion show in 2025? (Sorry, Dinah Jane Hansen. You seemed nice.) Who would be in a showmance with a Jonas brother if this were 2007? (You're up, Ally Brooke.)

The album's second track, "Bo$$," is a singsong-y stomp detailing the ladies' likes (money, fancy cars, Michelle Obama) and dislikes ("I want a Kanye/Not a Ray J"). This is only sensible - who wants a Ray J? - but there's a robotic, finger-wagging overconfidence to it ("C-o-n-f-i-d-e-n-t/That's me/I'm confident") that grows deeply irritating over the next 33 minutes.

That "Reflection" celebrates female empowerment and the virtues of sisterliness is to be both celebrated and expected, but it too often seems like curdled milk. "Think I'm in love 'cause you so sexy," they trill on the awful title track. "Boy I ain't talking 'bout you/I'm talking to my own reflection." This may be narcissism tarted up as empowerment, girl power as a tired plot device, but in its own way, it's progress.

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