Iglu & Hartly - '& Then Boom' (Mercury) Released 29/09/08

The talk of SXSW, signing to a major label, posters on every street, album debuts high before bombing out of the charts completely within a month...haven't we seen this all before? The interval between the blaze of hype and vanishing without a trace is getting shorter all the time, not aided by labels sticking all their chips on one big radio single and rushing out an album of barely-listenable facsimiles.

With their complete lack of subtlety, this misleadingly-named five-piece could only be from LA. The whole album is a relentless clash of synth stabs, Chili-peppers funk guitar and police sirens, as if they skipped the mixing process and just stuck everything on maximum. Irrespective of all this, how far through '& Then Boom' you get without losing the will to live will hinge largely on your tolerance for the whiny, poorly executed white-boy rapping that's plastered all over every song. Self-parodying? Ironic? It doesn't seem so, and even when it's absent there are blackboard-scraping vocodered harmonies to endure.

While on the actually-quite-good single 'In This City' the quality of the song allows you to forgive their other shortcomings for four minutes, Iglu & Hartly don't come even close to having any other tunes of the same calibre. 'DayGlo' races off like a cross between 'Take On Me' and the soundtrack to a Japanese arcade game before being dragged down by the rapping. Similarly, 'Out There' has a nice 80s production recalling Tears for Fears and even The Smiths before the vocals ruin everything, meaning some kind of karaoke version would be needed to endure beyond the two minute mark. Other moments, like 'People' and closer 'Jump Out Of Your Car', are just pure filler.

Iglu & Hartly really are the electro Andrew WK: going off at a million miles per hour and their enthusiasm almost admirable in short bursts, but gruelling and lacking in any substance over the course of an album. When they remember to write a chorus and everything is kept in check, like on 'In This City', Iglu & Hartly's exuberance can be channeled into something catchy and fun. But one song isn't enough to recommend this album, and it probably won't be enough to give Mercury a return on their considerable investment either. Has Orson taught us nothing?