Wish To Scream

Johnny Lloyd, mainman of Camden's Tribes, can't be accused of aiming too high. His ambition for his guitar-playing foursome is to be seen "as a band that's not going anywhere, that can deliver albums quickly". Maybe it's just British modesty – he also justified recording this album in Los Angeles on the basis it was cheaper than doing it in Liverpool – but his lack of swagger duly lowers expectations. Rightly so: Tribes' second album has the nuts and bolts of melodic rock nailed, but its diligent verse-verse-chorus constructions are the work of artisans, not artists. A few tracks favourably compare with bigger and better bands: How the Other Half Live could be U2 in bulldozingly epic mode, and Looking for Shangri-La's country twang and vaguely spiritual lyric conjure up their north London neighbours, Primal Scream. The bulk of the record, though, is epitomised by Englishman on Sunset Boulevard, which offers Lloyd's thoughts on the evergreen subject of Brits abroad. He condenses his California experience into a gospel-rock plod that hinges on the grandly meaningless line: "All you need is imagination".