A significant downside of this laborious 12-track affair is that every track sounds almost identical. Think of a backing soundtrack for an episode of your favourite teen drama, and you will have LP down to a tee. Opening track Can't Let Go sets the precedent; Pigg's vocals arrive almost instantly, and the tidy instrumental section is never given room to breathe. As a result, all attention is drawn to the singer's over- keen vocal experimentation, which at times is just unnecessary. The chorus which, funnily enough, goes "I can't let go" has enough of a melody to sustain attention, but it is nothing that Dashboard Confessional have not already covered.

Last Stop follows the same path ("when it comes to us, I was getting tired of pretending it was love") and never once succeeds in breaking from the mundane. Just Like I Am took four years to write, and one wonders why such an effort was gone to. It is perfectly possible to predict what is about to happen in each of these songs, and regardless of how agreeable the sound is, that is a disaster.

Fans of Puddle of Mudd may hear the ghost of She Fuckin' Hates Me in the track Trickery, a track in which Pigg's poetic influence comes to the fore with the line "I'm like a homeless man caught in a storm, with no point to run for cover". So brilliant that I have no idea what it means. Thankfully this is followed by one of LP's better moments, Magnetism. With a good deal more aggression in the vocals and a decent guitar hook, there is something here to get immersed in. One bright point is followed by another, the quiet ballad Sailed On. A slow piano-led build up breaks into a tender lament of lost love, which is by no means in the realms of Jeff Buckley, but at least shows some progress.

Unfortunately moments of promise such as this do no more than briefly raise expectancies. Overall LP seems a very calculated, simple affair, and this is summed up by its closing track On The Other Side. With one of the main lines being "Don't let life pass you by", it is clear that Pigg is not dealing with particularly meaty subject matter, and the rest of the song similarly fails to challenge. This is a typically bouncy concert closer about living life to its fullest and looking forwards instead of back, but then you knew it would be.

Despite a very good vocal performance and an album rife with decent melodic hooks, this is an album that you are more than likely to forget. A very flat and uninspiring piece of nicely-packaged fluff. And fluff easily dissipates.

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