If Athlete were an actual athlete, they'd be the fragile, geeky wimp - the guy who has to stop every few steps for a puff of his asthma inhaler and is constantly lapped by his teammates. That may sound a little harsh, but it's almost like the London quartet have purposely cultivated their lily-livered disposition over the course of their past two albums. While debut Vehicles and Animals hatched a few half-decent pop-rock tunes in You Got the Style and El Salvador, its follow-up, Tourist, was almost completely devoid of personality. Oomph? Forget about it - this is the band once (quite accurately) tagged as 'Coldplay Lite'. Their third outing is no different to its predecessors in that respect – it's a largely limp, anaemic example of songwriting from the band who are, quite genuinely, the British equivalent to Bell X1 (listen to The Outsiders for undiluted proof). Having said that, there are one or two interesting divergences from the banal. There's a half-hearted attempt at ambient electronica (In Between 2 States, Airport Disco) which eventually just sounds like Radiohead's little brothers messing around with their equipment, and Tokyo is a 'serious' pop song that whiffs of Fleetwood Mac. The remaining tracks are just uninspired dreamy, plodding numbers that don't really seem to go anywhere, and by the last third, each sliver of gloom has dissolved into one big soggy mass of hopelessness. Not even a bronze medal for this one.
