Annette Strean's amazingly dreamy vocals are the only consistent thread throughout the tracks, which themselves are the audio equivalent of a car-crash. The ideas are there, and it's nice to see a band experiment with anything these days but there's just far too much going on within each track. That and the fact that they've committed the cardinal sin - of the fourteen tracks on this album, four of them are under a minute long.

The only passable tracks on this are Yes And No, with all its Sophie Ellis-Bextor style angularity and clipped vocals, and Go To Sleep which there's no way you'd actually be able to do with this in the background. Birds and Fishes starts off promising and shows the hallmarks of something potentially fantastic, and then spirals off into utter drivel.

Opening song Turn Me Around with its echo effects also starts well, but suffers the same fate. Another might have been is the other supposed highlight Pink Champagne, which although not as bad as the others is a serious disappointment.

The whole things is punctuated by utterly pointless clicks, whistles, deliberate jumps and "I wonder what this button does...ooh that's cool" effects that completely detract from the underlying talent of the people involved. It's a real shame as this could have been a fantastic album with some real classics on it. Strean really should be recording better material than this.

If you know nothing whatsoever about music but like to think you're cutting edge and experimental, then this will probably slip into your collection quite well. Otherwise the only thing you're going to get out of this piece of junk is a headache!

share:  Facebook | Digg | del.icio.us | more

Mercury Prize 2009 nominees