Apart from a few exceptions like the White Stripes and Arcade Fire, the New Wave Revival wing of 2000s Indie Rock tended to be regarded with suspicion at the best of times. Indeed, most Indie snobs at the time would not have acknowledged its most successful crossover band, The Killers, to be an Indie Rock act at all. The most common semi-rational complaint about The Killers was that their sound was too derivative, but while there is a certain irony in the very existence of the term ‘retro-New Wave’, the band at least had some genuine Rock muscle and energy that was very refreshing in the era where most mainstream Rock hits came from the likes of Nickelback. These guys, however, are blatantly attempting to imitate the Killers themselves, which does give them a certain less-than-fresh, copy-of-a-copy quality. Worse, they’re basically The Killers without the Hard Rock edge that made them so compelling in the first place, making them feel less like successors and more like a softened, homogenized substitute. They’re at least more interesting songwriters than the next band to attempt this sound, the Neon Trees, but they still don’t remotely approach the songwriting prowess of the most successful of all post-Killers Indie New-Wave bands, Walk the Moon, so there’s no shortage of better alternatives to these guys. I generally defend the retro-New-Wave crossover hits of the 2000s, but frankly even I can’t think of much of a reason to listen to this band.
Verdict: Perhaps not truly bad, but thoroughly mediocre, which is damnation enough when there are so many better bands in the same style.