One year on since a Mitsubishi ad made their debut single 'Days Go By' an unexpected transatlantic hit, Dirty Vegas finally get around to releasing what's already the fastest-selling British debut album in America since the Spice Girls. The south London trio have one big thing going for them - unlike just about any other contemporary dance band you care to mention, they actually write proper songs with verses, choruses, and arrangements that you could imagine being played on an acoustic guitar. The only problem is, having hit on a winning formula, the band seem to have had no greater ambition than to repeat it ad nauseum over the course of an entire album. The result is that almost every track here sounds much the same, dominated by throbbing house beats, clubby keyboards and Steve Smith's elegiac vocals. As an album, Dirty Vegas is impeccably dancefloor friendly - but when played at home it sounds inoffensive at best and, at worst, unbearably dull. The band themselves are certainly not short of talent - but if they want a career with longevity, they need to have the courage to try out a few more tricks.
