The Electric City - Dark Skies

Now pay attention: this is the sound of manufactured authenticity. The Electric City so desperately want to be for real - it oozes out of every note and strangled, over-pronounced vowel, but their take on proper, authentic rock is far too polished to meet their own ends. This is absolutely fine if you want to pretend to like guitar music, but everything from the slippery yet spiky riffs to the ham-fisted attempts at creating an air of impending doom are so obviously calculated that the song loses any meaning it might have had. This makes Fall Out Boy look like pioneers. [Heather Crumley]