Bright Eyes –The People's Key

Opening with a three minute diatribe on reptilian overlords and inter-dimensional time travel that makes David Icke sound rational, Conor Oberst’s seventh studio album under his Bright Eyes moniker is a typically wrong-footing and divisive affair. Firewall, the song that ebbs into Denny Brewer’s intermittent musings on lizard-people and, um, pomegranates, starts with an ominous and spine-tingling guitar motif that promises much but ultimately goes nowhere, and takes its time getting there.

Follow up Shell Games sets the album’s tone better, being bright, clean and laden with 80s synth hooks that John Hughes would approve of. Such strands of DNA are also found in Beginner’s Mind and Haile Selassie whilst Ladder Song provides a core emotional tug late on. But along with some grating production, part of the problem is Oberst’s unusual lack of overwrought conviction, which, against the likes of the apocalyptic sounding Firewall, it cries out for. Strange what you miss when it’s gone sometimes. [Darren Carle]