"I wanna know what love is… I want you to show meeeeee!” [cue gospel choir]. What? That’s not the song! But it the opening track sounds just like it? Oh well…
If you wander into the Science Lab of Pop, and put an epindorph of MORNING RUNNER in the centrifuge, set to spin, you’ll find that it’ll separate out into 7 mgs of Keane, 3 mgs of Starsailor, 3 mgs of SnowPatrol, and a pinch of Coldplay and Midge Ure (along with some residual ‘other influences’).
Although given that it’s not entirely original (in fact, the entire album is completely derivative), it’s not a bad effort. There are some great tracks on this album, ‘Have A Good Time’ verges on a biting 'rock' song which is really catchy, and ‘Gone In flames’ is happy stomping indie anthem which will no doubt fill the sticky dance floor of any dingy indie club.
Less inspired examples are the direct Keane rip-off tracks (that being, erm, most of them), the most obvious example being ‘Burning Benches” – unsurprisingly this is their debut single, and given that it sounds like an absolute cross between Snow Patrol’s ‘Run’ and Keane’s ‘Somewhere Only We Know’, it should shift a few copies. Bizarrely enought though, this track
turns into a Jim Steinman-esque rock opera fest towards the end, highly strange stuff.
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“Hold Your Breath” is a nice enough track, it’s kind of jazzy and airy, but a bit on the saccharine side. Likewise ‘Oceans’ is an over-earnest piano ballad that’s ok. After a while though, the album merges into one heartfelt pile of indie-mush. Even when the style of the songs change, the tone is kind of the same, and I still can’t shake the StarSailor/Keane thing off my
back. It’s not exactly groundbreaking stuff.
None of the tracks are offensively bad, but overall the album is fairly bland, and I’m left wondering why they’ve left it a couple of years too late to release this – they’re emulating most of the bands who have fizzled out due to a fatal case of overkill a while back.
‘Wilderness is Paradise now’ would be nice as background music - and for those Robbie Williams fans out there who fancy something with a bit of (comparative) edge, this would sit fine in their record collections (it’s all relative isn’t it?).
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