An album that starts off trying too hard, packed with Japandroids ISN'T THIS FUN and Pavement archness, thrashing SO HARD to impress you. It gets better as it moves past some jitters and settles into itself, but there's still something a bit unnatural about it all. The first few songs also suffer from disconnected engineering - the vocals sound like they're coming in from a different room, mixed strange and subtly out of step with the music.
I bother wringing this all out because there's a lot to like here. The guitar sound is fucking monstrous, and when the band gets out of its own way it's got a loose scruffy charm - succeeding and rocking ass through zen rejection.
I'd love to hear the band's earlier stuff, before they felt obligated to live up to their big chance 3.5/5
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