Talk about hitting the ground running – like something between roadrunner and Pete Townsend’s windmill arms, only as legs. Add a cloud of dust and crackles of electricity and you near the impact of the opening double of ‘Highways Of Gold’ and the impossibly catchy Breeders-on-sherbet-and-diesel alt-pop helium bomb “Bats Over The Pacific Ocean”. Our recent memory can’t recall anything quite as immediate. This is the work of former members of ballistic emo sorts Blood Brothers and Pretty Girls Make Graves, and it shows, through the riffing urgency of ‘Vagabond Ballroom’ in the case of the former and the more varied melodic layering of ‘Antione and Birdskull’ for the later. But it’s Johnny Whitney and his most ridiculously craggy falsetto – a major exaggeration on his contributions to the Blood Brothers – that owns this album and eventually sells it a little short. While there is much to like throughout the album and evidence of creative musicians well oiled – ‘My Organ Sounds Like…’ deals convincingly in My Chemical Romance’s brand of rusty glam and ‘Bone Trees & A Broken Heart’ is delicate and disjointedly soulful – by the end there seems little instinct on how exactly to handle what they have. Thus the vocals get nauseating and the riffs stack up a little without cause. But essentially it boils down to them spending all their magic beans in the first 7 minutes.