Album: The Magic Numbers

The Magic Numbers, HEAVENLY

For about two-thirds of this debut album, The Magic Numbers almost live up to the hype. Listening to the surging, wide-eyed innocence of the single "Forever Lost", the brisk harmony pop of "Mornings Eleven", or the chugging early-Beatles gait of "Love Me Like You", it's possible to believe that here is yet another great homegrown pop group. Nice harmonies, bright but undemanding jangle-pop arrangements, and naggingly infectious hooks abound. But then halfway through they adopt a slower, more reflective approach for "Which Way To Happy", and things start to unravel. Bythe closing three songs, all the earlier confidence has been leached away: both "Wheels On Fire" and "Love's A Game" are crippled by tentative ballad structures which never really get going, and "Try", with its wan melodica accompaniment, closes the album on an even slower, more hesitant note. It's then that you realise how restless the earlier songs were, how they were never allowed to achieve their due impetus before switching to anothe

For about two-thirds of this debut album, The Magic Numbers almost live up to the hype. Listening to the surging, wide-eyed innocence of the single "Forever Lost", the brisk harmony pop of "Mornings Eleven", or the chugging early-Beatles gait of "Love Me Like You", it's possible to believe that here is yet another great homegrown pop group. Nice harmonies, bright but undemanding jangle-pop arrangements, and naggingly infectious hooks abound. But then halfway through they adopt a slower, more reflective approach for "Which Way To Happy", and things start to unravel. Bythe closing three songs, all the earlier confidence has been leached away: both "Wheels On Fire" and "Love's A Game" are crippled by tentative ballad structures which never really get going, and "Try", with its wan melodica accompaniment, closes the album on an even slower, more hesitant note. It's then that you realise how restless the earlier songs were, how they were never allowed to achieve their due impetus before switching to another section. Other than the lilting "This Love", hardly any of these songs is allowed to run its natural course. The result is an intermittently enjoyable, but somewhat over-egged, exercise in classic pop which only occasionally surmounts the air of studied artifice.