I Was A Cub Scout - I Want You To Know That There Is Always Hope

Attention fans of Postal Service and Bloc Party! Say hello to your favourite new band. These two key references have been combined into a melancholic chemical reaction and I Was A Cub Scout is the result. Single Echoes settles into an Okereke-approved guitar line that Todd Marriott sings oh-so-earnestly over, then shifts to a power chord backed chorus. We Were Made to Love opens with spacey keyboard chords, a bouncy 8bit synth, then quickly launches into the emo-epic chorus that appears throughout the record. Many people are going to be into this band and if anyone can sell records in 2008, it's going to be these guys. The problem is, they're almost annoyingly precious and can't quite find the pop gold to justify all that drama. Pink Squares is as heartfelt and evocative as intended, but throughout the rest of the album are glimpses that reveal a band trying so hard it hurts. [Tobias Kahn]