The Stereophonics shot to fame with songs about growing up in small-town Wales but their third album sees the band's limitations become painfully clear. After a couple of years spent solidly touring, Kelly Jones is now writing about music journalists, taxi drivers and tourist traps in songs that are high on bitterness, low on insight. The music, meanwhile, is the same old unpretentious, tuneful grit-rock that suits Jones's rasping vocals well but suffers badly from a lack of pace and variety. While a few decent tracks rescue the album from being a complete disaster, the Stereophonics sound like a band that desperately needs an injection of new ideas.

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