A good six years into their career, London-bred and Brooklyn-based rockers Alberta Cross have released only two proper studio albums, the second of which has just seen the light of day in the UK this month.
Not to say that the group hasn’t been busy –they’ve toured extensively alongside such heavyweights as Them Crooked Vultures, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Oasis, earned coveted festival spots at Coachella, Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza, and churned out a small handful of EPs along the way.
Yet still it’s difficult to ignore the noticeable sense of departure that permeates ‘Songs Of Patience‘, the years-in-the-making follow up to their 2009 debut ‘Broken Side Of Time‘.
The title of the record itself hints at the anxiety surrounding its creation, as singer-guitarist Petter Erickson Stakee and bassist Terry Wolfers have openly acknowledged that the path between each recording was as crooked as it was complicated. The duo shed the rest of the band that backed them during the process, burned through three separate session locations and five different producers, and even endured a brief split amongst themselves when Erickson Stakee bailed back home to Sweden to regroup after a self-admitted downward spiral.
Such inner turmoil can be either the stuff of creative legend or the vehicle for an eventual undoing, but in this case it’s neither. All Erickson Stakee and Wolfers have done is deliver a collection of songs that is overcooked and underwhelming, as if the prolonged gestation period pushed them past the point of artistic innovation into an unwanted realm of excessive internal editing. Each section of each track is exactly where it should be, and each imperfection is scrubbed off so much that you can’t help but begin to see the blueprint instead of the building.
The album arrives on a strong enough note with a one-two punch of what Alberta Cross does best. Opener and early single ‘Magnolia‘ features crystal clear chords over a building drum-roll that leads into a simple yet effective sing-along, while ‘Crate Of Gold‘ apes a Neil Young riff and spins it into a bluesy floor stomp filled with heavy kicks and subtle squealing guitar lines.
After that the ship loses steam considerably, as the middle section of the record blurs into a shapeless form of conventional pop balladry – opening salvo, muted verse, all-hands-on-deck chorus incorporating the song’s title, place-holding solo.
This sort of paint-by-numbers approach works fine on an individual level. With its brooding atmospherics and hummable melody, a track like ‘Lay Down‘ might stand out within a playlist on your stereo, but when it’s followed by the same sort of rigid structure that reigns in the sweeping melancholy of ‘Come On Maker‘ or the wounded release of ‘I Believe In Everything‘, it instead becomes another pleasurable, yet easily forgettable performance.
Their previous output possessed a deft mixture of Britpop sensibility and Southern rock swag, and it was that balancing act that provided a level of excitement to the songwriting. Other than the boneheaded bounce of ‘Money For The Weekend‘, there is very little in the way of risk taking here.
This noticeable absence of adventure is ultimately what turns ‘Songs Of Patience’ from a potentially interesting endeavor into merely an acceptable one.
