Walk The Moon - Walk The Moon

Call this fresh and carefree, joyful and easy. Or call it unimaginative and samey, boring and repetitive. The most exciting thing about ‘Walk The Moon’ might actually be the psychedelic treehouse cover, which promises sounds the album doesn’t deliver: they’re drifting between The Killers and Two Door Cinema Club in a sea of meaningless tunes with no depth whatsoever.

Songs such as ‘Lisa Baby’, ‘Tightrope’ or ‘Fixin” are undefinable, inconsistent wannabe alt-pop. ‘Lions’ is a pointless interlude - it has no obvious connection to the rest of the album or its non-existent thread. It’s quite disappointing, actually, seeing as the album begins rather promisingly. ‘Quesadilla’ starts with rumbling drums, but sadly quickly turns in to a flimsy electronic track. The same drum beat re-appears on the third track, ‘Next In Line’, which begins like The Killers but evolves in to a disturbing, hectic, and nervous chaos. A sudden drift of vocalist Nicholas Petricca’s voice to falsetto is just as unexpected as the appearance of echo in the second verse. If one wanted to be mean, you could say it all ‘turns a bit Mika’. And suddenly that colourful album cover looks oddly familiar, too…

There’s a hint of ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ at the start of the repetitive ‘Shiver Shiver’, and a bit of The Kooks’ guitar pop in ‘Jenny’, which probably would’ve charted in 2005.

It’s not all bad, however. ‘Anna Sun’ works as a whole unlike most other tracks, and develops the drive a dancefloor filler needs: it’s sunny, easy, carefree electronic pop and Petricca has a really nice break in his voice that makes you wonder where it hid during the rest of the album. Mandatory ballad ‘Iscariot’ is another highlight, having something almost Simon and Garfunkel about it, it’s simply well-written, almost wispy and wonderfully melodic.

Closing track ‘I Can Lift A Car’, however, makes The Killers’ ‘Dancer’ sound like a Nietzsche quote. ‘I can lift a car up all by myself’ may be a nice ability, but it’s not something you want to hear repeated over and over again. It builds up, as all good pop songs should, but sadly from a base that’s nothing more than average riffs and bland lyrics - something that unfortunately sums up the album as a whole.