Make Good Your Escape - Never Come Back Here Again

Purveyors of euphoric rock, Make Good Your Escape return with their debut, Never Look Back Here Again on Fierce Panda. Filled to overflowing with soaring guitars and strong rhythms, they add a slight variation to the rock template. Junctures of true brilliance fuse with Radiohead angst and a propensity to rely on a profound U2 influence. It's in the Bono-esque vocals, it's in the melodies, it even permeates the tender moments of an album with a fantastic abundance of brash rock. For all the flashes of adroitness within Never Look Back Here Again, the over-reliance on U2 for influence shows a disappointing lack of ambition from a band so obviously capable of so much more. [Neil Ferguson]