Heydays

Streamlined and with every moment as vital as the next yet playful and curious, Heydays manages to craft a new path from a well-travelled landscape.

Shortly after the release of Swimming Through Sunlight, Brown complained that he was already bored with its songs and admitted the band hadn't considered how it would feel to be bashing out the same garage band combinations a year later (the answer: tedious, if their new material-heavy live sets were anything to go by). With Heydays, they needn't stress about falling into that trap again.

Heydays is a surprisingly mature, accomplished second effort from a group who previously might have been perceived as a joky side project.

The current trend of Nineties-leaning music shows little signs of abating, and Heydays is yet another gloriously messy, scratchy string to its bow.

A short album of promise and potential stretched too thin by its stifled delivery.

The second half of the album has less attitude, exposing the softer side of the band that has come across in the lyrics since its beginning.