Circa Waves - Death & Love Pt. 1 

Ostensibly the product of a heart surgery-inducing health scare experienced by frontman Kieran Shudall, Circa Waves’ sixth comes accompanied by an implied mission statement of defiant, life-affirming optimism. And, as their decade-long career demonstrates, this is something they can do very well indeed. Here, ‘Like You Did Before’, ‘We Made It’, and ‘Le Bateau’ are prime contenders for such festival staple status: a three-track run of rose-tinted, crowd-pleasing anthems whose lyrics (“It took a long time to get here / But yeah we made it”; “Tomorrow can wait for the sunrise”) will be situational solid gold to festival revellers and romanticising, main character teen couples. You can practically feel the residue of airborne pints landing on you as you listen.

Elsewhere, though, there’s not enough oomph to obscure the unshakable feeling that the band have simply been here before (and more than once, at that). Opener ‘American Dream’ unashamedly flogs the thematic dead horse that everything is better in the ol’ US of A - a choice that, given the current climate, feels both uninspired and ill-judged. Then there’s ‘Let’s Leave Together’ - a bouncy, too-twee number buoyed by jangly guitars and actual whistling, which seemingly riffs off the lyrical idea used just two tracks prior (‘Le Bateau’’s “It’s true / I only wanna leave with you”) to stretch a concept far too thin.

And while the album’s more introspective, emotional offerings (‘Blue Damselfly’, ‘Everything Changed’) serve as satisfactory foils to the euphoria of its first half, you can’t help but wish this contrast was heightened tenfold. Given its significant personal story - not to mention its lofty title - ‘Death & Love Pt. 1’ could have been an opportunity for the band to explore meatier topics of mortality and aging; instead, this feels like a frustratingly safe exercise in walking well-trodden paths. The question is, do Circa Waves trade well in nostalgia, or have they just never really evolved?