There's something sweetly nostalgic about the music video for New Kids on the Block's "Summertime," the lead single off their reunion album, The Block. The speedboat. The jogging on the beach. The white suits. The helicopter. Even Mariah Carey doesn't make videos like this anymore! (Well, sort of.)

But even if we wanted it to be, teen-pop will never be what it once was. Still, aside from "Summertime," The Block (Interscope, September 2) mostly avoids getting stuck in the past. In the 14 years since the "band" broke up, Joey McIntyre and Jordan Knight have both run their course as solo heartthrobs, and Donnie Wahlberg has segued his talents into a string of acting jobs playing creepy-looking police detectives. If as boys their shtick caused more harm than good, as men it remains a source of embarrassment they're eager to sweep under the rug. It's like suddenly they're concerned about these so-called futures of theirs. Yet here we are.

When post-*NSYNC Justin Timberlake sought his bona fides as a pop artist, he found one great producer in Timbaland and co-opted his sound. NKOTB have a less successful but more varied approach: They collaborate with, among others, Lady Gaga on the opener "Big Girl Now," a gritty urban jam that more or less drops any abashment the group ever had about sex (one Kid tells Gaga that her body has got "a grown man ready to blow"). It's mature, we suppose, and it continues throughout the album, but it only succeeds in making things uneasily skeezy. Case in point: The oddly romantic-sounding "Click Click Click," which asks a girl to pose on a sofa for some dude's personal collection.

In fact, it's almost all voyeurism and sad attempts at acting horny! On "Single" and "Put It on My Tab," NKOB play seductive alongside Ne-Yo and Akon, presumably to give the whole thing some fresh R&B perspective, but both singers (pretty boring in their own right) tend to get lost in the mix. The Kids want it both ways: to get their middle-aged rocks off and sweet-talk 20-year-olds into a red wine dinner.

In the end, the catchy slogans ("Sexify My Love") and collaborations (including one with The Pussycat Dolls) come off as trying a little too hard for the MTV cred they didn't earn the first time around. And besides, can't these NKOTB produce their own middling pop songs?