Opening with Harder to Breathe, the album kicks in to gear with a very commercial track. It’s glossy, well produced, punchy and polished. It comes across as a guitar-like Timberlake track. It’s perhaps an obvious comment, seeing as they are American, but they sound like American. They have the strong lead vocals, guitars and beats. It comes across almost like Kid-Rock lite. It’s a good track though, even if it lacks soul or interest.

Released as their first single, from an album that has been re-released after their failure the first time round, This Love changes the tone and style of music to something you’d probably hear in a trendy cocktail bar. An enjoyable track, it was the first track that actually got me interested. I’ve only heard it a couple of times, and on my third listen, it doesn’t sound as impressive as it initially did. It mixes various styles, and it works well. Again another very polished track, with good production.

I wasn’t aware this was a 14 track album, fortunately most of the tracks consist of 2-3 minute shorts so it’s not too bad. Shiver sounds familiar, taking bits of the first two tracks almost and creating a third variation. While mixing that said Timberlake style, sound vocally like him at times.

It’s obvious the band is aimed at a certain target, it’s very much a trend thing, and Shiver doesn’t really come across as very interesting, nor does it sound very original. I begin to fear the rest of the album will be taking a similar turn. The guitar solo is quite out of place, perhaps indicating a lack of direction of what they want to do. It’s all very well interweaving variety, as long as theirs consistency. If I wanted inconsistency I would listen to Madonna’s latest work, “We have rap, we have hip hop, all of it is shit of course”.

I’m sick to death of listening to this pretentious, dull, unoriginal shite and going back to listen to some Franz Ferdinand

She Will Be Loved seems to work best thus far, providing melancholy vocals to rather dull lyrics. However, it then turns into a Britney-esque track with rhyming, dreary lyrics, and then launches in to testicle-vocals, the art of squeezing your nuts until you can pull out the note. The lead has a really interesting voice, he’s quite talented as well as good looking. However, he seems to be wasting his time with tracks that are, thus far, rather pedestrian. So far the band sounds like a second-rate Matchbox 20. The song starts to grate after a little while, and then goes back into Britney mode with it’s crappy chorus. It’s all far too fucking familiar.

Not quite hip hop, not quite R&B, not quite anything really. A bit of a weak track, which is saying much as the competition thus far has been far from difficult. Yet Tangled still manages to be worse than the other tracks up to now. Repetitive, soulless and pretty horrific over all. At times it sounds very much like Mariah Carey during her Music Box years, and equally poor.

How this album managed to get released is beyond my comprehension. This is another half-arsed track, and is partially better than the last one, Tangled, but is partially worse. The Sun is the sort of song you expect to hear in Dawson’s Creek: Musically and lyrically inept pap that works better as incidental music or a backing track to other noise, so that you can just hear but not quite make out what it is. It sounds better that way.

Next up is Must Get Out, and I’m only 9 tracks away after this to do to the CD exactly what this title says. The lyrics, written by some retarded monkey with one real and one glass eye no doubt, are rather abysmal. There’s nothing of substance, and the vocals that once had potential now seem to suggest no potential. That is to say, it’s the same vocal style all the way through. There’s no variety in the guy’s voice, and the music, Christ, it’s like they’re regurgitating what they’ve learnt and just recycling it, and taking chords from other music they’ve listened. If he says, “I’m lifting you up” like he’s talking to a fucking rabbit in a cage, I’m going to have to kill the spider. Dead spider. Crap song.

This album would be played in bars in the middle of nowhere, because it’s too far to get another album, and they bought this on the recommendation of fools with bad taste in music

I am trying my best to like an album which is completely shit so far. In fact, if this is just a half album of good tracks and then half bad, it’s already a failure. If it’s like this all the way through, I have no interest in listening to it all. In fact, Sunday Morning is more mundane elevator music. Fantastic, so shopping centres and elevators now have an album worth of music to play. Or perhaps they can play it some cheap ass bar where they’re trying to be modern, can’t afford decent music, have cheap plastic chairs, dodgy on-stage sets, and very few customers, except those people who are desperate enough to enter the bar, because there isn’t another place for forty miles.

This album would be played in bars in the middle of nowhere, because it’s too far to get another album, and they bought this on the recommendation of fools with bad taste in music. It’s so offensively poor, and would not look out of place in said bar, if it had a dodgy stage with rickety floor boards. I can imagine the band wearing tuxedo’s that are far too short for them, and playing to an audience of one, and on a good day two people.

There are eight tracks to go, and now I’m listening to Secret. Will I manage to survive the rest of the album? Or better yet, will the album survive me or be removed faster than pockets by Fagin? Secret is the suicide song. The rest were just the sleeping pills, perhaps some alcohol mixing in with the pills. Or maybe we can say Secret is the drink, that is mixing in with the pills. It’s awful, it’s willing the listener to kill themselves; challenging them with the will to see this album through, and face ultimate death, or quit now and live. There’s a perverse persuasion about this challenge which I may take up. The track itself is pointless twaddle, and I have no care whatsoever as to what he’s bitching on about.

I am trying my best to like an album which is completely shit so far. In fact, if this is just a half album of good tracks and then half bad, it’s already a failure

The same goes for Through With You, another clone track, sound much like the rest of the album. I can sincerely see why the album was re-released, or more precisely why it failed the first time. What the fuck is this shite? See at first, I was pretty open to this, but now it’s become a case of “How Strong Is Your Will?”. It’s waning fast, the voice has become irritatingly annoying. This is an album of singles, for teens who think they’re trendy, who think they’re cool, who probably by lots of Pop albums and idolise the likes of N-Sync or Backstreet Boys. This band is the guitar equivalent, as the lyrics and music are in the same league. Abysmal music even for dead people.

Woman, chic it ain’t. It attempts to be, with a cool jazzy essence attempted, but it flops worse than a panda with a vasectomy. Impotent would be too kind a word to level at this track, as it’s beyond impotent. It doesn’t even have any genitalia. This is how far gone this album will make you, if you even attempt to listen to it this far. It must be the alcohol and sleeping pills kicking in. I just had a thought, this album wouldn’t sound too far off from Mike Flowers. I don’t know if that’s an insult to Mike Flowers, or a complement to Maroon 5. Either way, it’s shit.

Jesus Christ, what can I say, I’m stunningly grateful that the album is over. Ah wait, my hopes have been dashed, the play list didn’t display the bottom list of the tracks. No, there is more torture, and the next piece comes in the form of Sweetest Goodbye. It’s another unoriginal ballad of nonsense. He could be singing about the dirt on his car, and it would sound exactly the same, and exactly as awful, not only that, it would be exactly as unimportant to me as knowing what colour the moon is in a certain light. Who cares? I don’t know.

How this album managed to get released is beyond my comprehension

There’s approximately ten minutes left of this crap, and my head is hurting. I’m sick to death of listening to this pretentious, dull, unoriginal shite and going back to listen to some Franz Ferdinand. Scottish rockers with some fucking attitude, not dreary heard-it-all-before-not-sure-what-we-are-American-high-production-value-nonsense.

If you want to commit suicide, by all means by this album. By the end of it, you should be dead. If you’re not, stick it on repeat and you’ll ensure you’re dead. A complete and utter waste of fucking time. I’ve got a fucking headache from listening to this bollocks. I couldn’t even finish this crap.

The biggest disappointment is the fact that the producer of this trash was also the producer for Jeff Buckley. So I have to ask, what the fuck went wrong? Did he decide to listen to a shit load of pop & R&B records and think, “Let’s make some crap and sell it”. The band are a good looking bunch, the album is polished but it defintely isn’t for me. I like my music to have some soul, have some sincerity and life. This band, and this album has none of those attrtibutes.

Verdict: Utter bollocks. Listen to Keane, they’re a shit load better than this bunch of dog crap