Bombay Bicycle Club have been the underground darlings of British indie music for pretty much the past two years, releasing two incredible E.P's in the form of 'The Boy I Used To Be' and 'How We Are' and proving to be incredibly succesful on the live scene. The hype for this band can only really be compared to that of the Arctic Monkeys in 2006, prior to the release of 'Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not.' Where the Arctic Monkeys pushed their debut through shortly after they reached an incredible level of recognition, Bombay Bicycle Club have spent over 2 years developing the album whilst being the focus of much attention. The big question raised with the release of the album is; will it have been worth the wait?
Well, yes. And no. This album is as divisive and complex as you would expect from a band that are both incredibly complex musically and low key personally. The diversity of tracks is staggering, showing a range of influences and capabilities that haven't really been seen since Arcade Fire released 'Funeral.' Opener 'Emergency Contraception Blues' is possibly the shortest Mogwai track ever written, whereas recent single 'Always Like This' takes the Afrobeat scene that Vampire Weekend rely so heavily on and meld it into Factory Records entire output. Two of the bands most popular songs, 'Cancel On Me' and 'The Hill' have made their way onto the album, despite being well over two years old. The inclusion of 'The Hill', though, is where the album's flaws start to become more apparent. Re-recording a hit is always a dubious and rarely successful choice, as Enter Shikari's constant tweaking of 'Sorry You're Not A Winner' proved, and there is the sensation with 'I Had The Blues But Shook Them Loose' that Bombay Bicycle Club don't know what they want to achieve with the album.
There is no real cohesiveness; all of the songs are recognisably Bombay Bicycle Club, but in many ways this is how you imagine a badly organised 'Best Of' would sound in 20 years time. The songs are consistent, although 'Autumn' and 'Magnet' don't showcase the technical guitar work that for many has been the USP of the band. But the album just seems...messy. There's no crafting in terms of the album as one sentient unit, an entity in itself. The sounds of the album are too diverse to really be seen as a singular outing; the happy-go lucky guitar of 'The Hill' just seems the polar opposite of the White Lies-esque 'Dust On The Ground.' In many ways, I just feel like the band have played their hand too soon; if one album had been used to capture the youthful exuberance of their E.Ps, and then another to showcase their darker, more foreboding writing, then there would have been an obvious sense of progression, rather than a sense of hotch-potch production.
This is still a fantastic album, and the band will surely receive the awareness and publicity that they rightfully deserve on the back of its release and their numerous festival dates over the summer. It's just somewhat disappointing as a Bombay Bicycle Club release, who for many were going to be as important and groundbreaking as the Smiths. The level of potential that they showcased frequently prior to the album's release perhaps set expectations too high; they are by all means incredibly young, most of the band only just having reached their 20's. Hopefully, the 'difficult second album' will clarify their united voice and vision as a band.
6.5/10
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