Various Artists: Dorm Sessions Volume 4

It’s not every day that the press release accompanying a promo CD comes from the Berklee College of Music, but such is the case with Dorm Sessions Volume 4, in which Music Business/Management majors at Boston’s Berklee get to run and manage their own label, often featuring up-and-coming hip-hop artists, but this time featuring a lot of college rock, ranging from the punk-ska of Big D and the Kids Table to the quixotic beat-box intrudes of (appropriately enough) Steve Foxx the Beatboxx.  There’s some nice curveballs, like a turn to pop-accented R&B (remember Madi Diaz from the documentary Rock School?), but the music is largely college rock: simple, hook-filled, and stuffed with lyrics that only twenty-somethings could pen.  Highlights include Thick as Thieves sad lament “Here’s to Waking Up” and Teenage Symphonies’ radio-rocker “West Coast”, but the album has a large been-there heard-that quality.  It’s a disc that won’t change your life, but for a sampling of what college rock is doing now, it gets the Bic lighter waving proudly in the air.