The Laurel CollectiveFeel Good Hits Of A Nuclear WinterReview

This debut release from London-based indie experimentalists, Laurel Collective, is an album of small pleasures. A peculiar mixture of heard-it-all-before guitar rock with flashes of inspired weirdness, Feel Good Hits Of A Nuclear Winter suggests a creative force pulling in two directions – with an effect that’s as obstinately ironic as its heavy-handed title suggests.

International Love Affair is an inoffensive enough slice of 80s-influenced mope pop, but a flawed choice as an opening track. Nowhere else on the album do the vocals sound quite so much like an audition for a Morrissey tribute act, so why here? It doesn’t help quell the rising sense of familiarity.

Things improve a little with the synth fringes and upbeat, cavorting guitars of Vuitton Blues, their most prominent single to date – but again, it's hardly striking in its originality. And yet there are flashes of lyrical wit scattered throughout this album that suggest a more creatively satisfying potential for Laurel Collective than this rather samey debut.

Hercules is joyously geeky in its imagery (although one wonders if the entire song came about because someone realised they could rhyme 'cream tea' with 'history'). It's hard to dislike a band with the balls to write a peppy song about love and Greek mythology, and Laurel Collective are undeniably at their best when toying with these kind of art rock motifs. Also promising is the wistful Billion Planets, which manages to be sweetly philosophical without descending into mawkishness.

It's entirely possible that Laurel Collective might have it in them to follow in the footsteps of bands like XTC or the Shins in combining mass-appeal alt-rock with a genuine intellectual savvy – but if that's the case, they'll have to do better than this. For the most part, their debut offering is an all-too cautious affair, but with just enough hints at greater things to stay interesting.