Air Traffic - Fractured Life Album Review

Air Traffic
Fractured Life
Album Review

An astonishingly assured debut from this Bournemouth band, who take indie rock and make it sound elegant, interesting, and seductively, arrogantly great, as if Muse covered Keane with a dash of swagger. The song Get In Line is funkier indie than the Fratellis can manage, and it isn't even down as a single yet.

It would be easy to underestimate this album on first listen - is it a bit too close to heavier Keane, a smidge too much beefy-Snow Patrol? - but second and subsequent listenings reveal why Zane Lowe and Steve Lamacq have been fans for a while. Nothing on the album is as good as Get In Line, but the single Shooting Star is a great Feeder-like moment of rock, and it is accompanied by a few other great rock songs.

The album is short, and the odd so-so moment quickly passes by. It's not an album that aims to appeal to the bleeding edge indie kids, for whom this album will contain far too much mainstream appeal; if you come from the other direction, however, and have been satisfied with some Coldplay but want more Fratellis mixed into it, Fractured Life's your disc.

4/5

Mike Rea