| Air Traffic - Fractured Life |
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On Air Traffic's first release, Fractured Life, the small-town Wessex band's brooding piano ballads often veer a little too close to cozy cocktail-party music for comfort.
The album's standout tune, "Charlotte," is a bouncy disco-punk anthem that finds vocalist Chris Wall yelping a spot-on impression of Hot Hot Heat's Steven Bays, but too often these Brit rockers are content with following Coldplay's tried-and-true surging keyboard formula (the high-reaching but flat "Shooting Star"), or The Fray's heart-on-my-sleeve journal confessions (See Air Traffic's "Time Goes By," which is gearing up to be this year's answer to the drab radio hit "How To Save a Life"). While safe, in no way is this album uninspired. Is it a crime to write safe, radio friendly music? Of course not, but if Air Traffic wants to be anything more than background noise, they'll have to step a bit farther into uncharted territory. -Zachary Dinerstein
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