Emergency

The debut album by the Pigeon Detectives, 2007's Wait For Me, was a fairly scrappy, almost punky take on the great Britpop revival of the late '00s, full of refreshingly concise two-minute rockers owing much to the Buzzcocks/Undertones tradition. Unfortunately, the rush-released follow-up, barely a year later, loses most of what was appealing and fun about the debut. The album was produced by Stephen Street, whose work for the Smiths, Blur and more recently the Kaiser Chiefs has made him a major figure in the style, but unfortunately, his production seems uncharacteristically weak, or perhaps it's merely that his briskly efficient sound shows up the inherent weaknesses of the Pigeon Detectives' sound. Indeed, the latter interpretation unfortunately seems more likely, because the handful of manic sub-180-second rockers -- "Say It Like You Mean It," "You Don't Need It," "I'm Not Gonna Take This," etc. -- sound more or less like retreads of the band's earlier singles. Sadly, those songs that try to expand the group's musical focus, like the Oasis-style rocker "Everybody Wants Me" and the dreary Kaiser Chiefs knockoff "Keep On Your Dress," fare even worse, coming off as both derivative and not particularly interesting, the worst possible combination. Oh well, the original spate of Britpop bands had trouble coming up with decent second albums too.