The keyboards used for 'Do You Love Me' must have been an in-joke, right? Overlapping cheesy deep voices last used effectively at the very beginning of Queens 'One Vision' make an appearance here, but instead if enhancing an excellent intro like they do in that song, they completely distract here on two occasions in the middle of the track. The sounds used for the melody actually made me laugh too, and the funniest part is this song clearly is supposed to be dead serious.
The keyboards used for 'Do You Love Me' must have been an in-joke, right? Overlapping cheesy deep voices last used effectively at the very beginning of Queens 'One Vision' make an appearance here, but instead if enhancing an excellent intro like they do in that song, they completely distract here on two occasions in the middle of the track. The sounds used for the melody actually made me laugh too, and the funniest part is this song clearly is supposed to be dead serious.
'Broken Silence' is an improvement on what came before, in all honesty, but then being told you have to have a root canal probably is too. 'Sonic 2' makes a more long-lasting impression here with the bass squelching its way uncomfortably through what is actually a pretty good effort. This then leads into 'Honey Trap', which begins the improvement that then continues towards the end of the record. This song is quite easily something that could have been discarded during a Killers recording though and as a result seems to lack the imagination of other tracks on offer here.
Other than loads of unnecessary keyboard wankery, overuse of electric noises and not really knowing what kind of band they are, I only have one real issue with this record, and that’s Blair Jollands vocals which, admittedly, are haunting, and ghostly, and emotive and strained to the point of fragility. He has a good falsetto on the rare occasions he uses it too. It’s a good voice, but he has little to no dynamic control. How a song uses loud and quiet sections is often instrumental to making a song great instead of good, but he’s stuck at one volume throughout, debilitating the more subtle aspects of the quieter songs.
Overall, this has the makings of being a great album, and some of the tracks on offer are truly excellent, but there’s too much fluff, too much extra nonsense, and that knocks this album down a bit.
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Other than loads of unnecessary keyboard wankery, overuse of electric noises and not really knowing what kind of band they are, I only have one real issue with this record, and that’s Blair Jollands vocals which, admittedly, are haunting, and ghostly, and emotive and strained to the point of fragility. He has a good falsetto on the rare occasions he uses it too. It’s a good voice, but he has little to no dynamic control. How a song uses loud and quiet sections is often instrumental to making a song great instead of good, but he’s stuck at one volume throughout, debilitating the more subtle aspects of the quieter songs.
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