Wednesday 27/04/04 Haven @ Carling Academy 2, Liverpool

At the start of the evening, a handful of die-hard fans are hanging about the entrance of a half-full venue, exchanging suspicious glances with the chain smoking door men. This kind of sets the tone of the evening - emptiness and a sense of unease.

Haven reach the stage to discover a small but friendly audience made up of students and middle aged men, needing no introduction they just get down to business and open their set with 'Tell Me', a good start, full of tight guitar riffs and strong vocals from lead singer Gary Briggs.

This however is just the problem, their whole set is jammed packed full of nice guitars and vocals; which is exactly where any excitement ends.

They do make an effort to introduce some guitar effects during 'Let it Live'; and there are constant instrument changes throughout the set, but it's all to no avail.

The introduction of new tracks such as the title track from new album 'All for a Reason', along with 'Wouldn’t Change a Thing' go down well, but the band are trying so hard to be cool, that they end up looking like they don’t want to be there at all. An attempt at banter with the audience does nothing to convince us otherwise. Luckily, there is a brief respite towards the end, encore 'Something Moved Me' is definitely the best track of the evening, with some members of the audience actually breaking out into furious head nodding.

See, here is a band whose every chorus makes you want to tear yer ears off. These boys have the unbelievable knack of making each track sound exactly like its predecessor, reminding me of other acts with this peculiar talent such as Feeder and Travis (nurse!! the sedatives! - ed).

Here we have a band committing the ultimate crime.  They are neither bad or good - they are horribly, unbelievably bland. 

Let's hope that by the time they're writing again, they've managed to grow some personalities.