Lunglight

In The Onion’s hilarious satire on internet music journalism, in which a prominent website reviews the entire history of music, the “reviewer” concludes that "the whole medium comes off as derivative of Pavement." At times, such as when listening to The Shaky Hands’ second album, it’s hard to disagree: Pavement continue to be a key touchstone for almost every indie band coming out of America.

On the opening four tracks of Lunglight this is no bad thing. Taking up where Tapes ‘n’ Tapes’ debut left off, ‘New Parade’ and ‘Loosen Up’ hurtle along nicely in a punchy, pleasingly rough-edged, Pavementish way. ‘Air Better Come’ sees them foray into Clinic territory, all twitchy yelping and Velvets rattle. ‘We Are Young’ is the highpoint, with its staccato riffing and terrific chorus.

Thereafter, they’re never quite as good. The trouble is, they come a cropper every time they try to slow things down, and the mid-section of the album loses considerable momentum. On ‘Neighbours’ they attempt a more abrasive, hard-edged approach, but it doesn’t suit them, while ‘No Say’ never really takes off. Worst of all is the ponderous ‘Love of All‘, where they get bogged down in tape-loops and slapped drums to no end whatsoever. When The Strokes blazed a trail with Is This It, they taught everyone the lesson that the all-fast-songs album was still a winning recipe: The Shaky Hands clearly weren’t listening.

The second-half is buoyed by the fantastic ‘You’re The Light‘, which rides along a bell-clear guitar motif and re-injects some pace into proceedings, and the final stretch of the album is strong (Love of All aside), with Wilco-esque closer ‘Oh No’ a highlight. Lunglight is, the odd mis-step aside, an enjoyable album, though the feeling persists that they don’t do quite enough to separate themselves from the Pavement-aping pack. Still, if they can keep ‘em fast and keep ‘em coming, they could be well worth keeping an eye on.