- Label
- Parlophone
- Release date
- 3rd September 2007
- Genre
- Indie
- Buy this album
- Order CD
Business as usual on third album of inoffensive rock noodlings from Deptford four-piece
There’s nothing like gentle, sensitive, epic rock to divide music fans. While millions buy Coldplay and Snow Patrol albums and hold lighters aloft at their arena gigs, millions of others choke on their own sick at the mere thought of them. Despite peddling an unfashionably similar sound for the past five years, South Londoners Athlete don’t attract quite such derision, while not selling quite as many records. It must be for being such thoroughly nice chaps – although their second album Tourist’s torturously epic ambitions did grate depressingly over 12 laborious tracks.
This third effort is pleasingly more upbeat while the MOR elements remain: sweetly strummed guitars, twinkly pianos, quiet verses and loud windswept choruses. However, what has always separated Athlete from the big guns are a lack of killer melodies and variation. It’s the case once more. Second Hand Stores, In The Library and Hurricane are perky and polite enough but grapple for a hook. The moody, trip-hoppy The Outsiders with its unsettling steal of a Millwall FC terrace chant, is far more affecting – but is a mere peek over the fence of Athlete’s potential beyond their unthreatening rock neighbourhood.
More to try: Coldplay: Parachutes Snow Patrol: Eyes Open Badly Drawn Boy: The Hour Of Bewilderbeast
