The surprise with this album is how impressions garnered from the zesty electro-rock single with a punch ‘Assassinator 13’ and its squelching predecessor ‘Like It Or Leave It’ were so far off the ticket. We thought infuriating insistence, nagging computer-generated aural intrusions and a bratty flailing were order of the day. We liked their style but saw a short shelf life and were unsure of their capabilities. But what we get here, when taken in its entirety anyway, is actually a more sparsely spread maturity, some light-fingered exploration, electro-gazing and a whole lot less haste. Which either broadens our interest or just ends up sending their promise off wandering an ambiguous trail to nowhere in particular.
‘Assassinator 13’ is a bolshy enough way to start, with ‘Ether Radio’ sustaining a momentum, sounding like a white-Brit-indie Blondie running on a faltering generator, and ‘Drink’ chilling things out in both directions, mixing a soft techno bass line with olde folk fragility and suggesting they’d love to emulate ‘Amnesiac’ but are just too nervous to buy anything on the Warp label. It throws the net wide and gentle and pulls in a nice little catch.
It’s up and down from thereon in. ‘Hate TV’ is fairly sharp electro pop in the Echoboy mould, but ‘Scissors, Paper, Stone’ is a psychedelic U2 when it doesn’t need to exist in those proportions, ‘To Sacrifice A Chid’ is too superficial for the emotion they’re attempting elsewhere and ‘Bombs’ just isn’t convincing or particularly interesting. It’s a fairly strong record in spots, but it would be a lot stronger if they put a lot more of themselves in and didn’t get lost amongst their own undirected ambitions.