91Èȱ¬

It's hard to escape the thought that this really should have taken off at some point. As a song, it is stately, regular, driving, it has a groove and a bit of a swagger...and yet it never really seems to go anywhere. I'm not someone who normally demands that a song contains tricky time-signatures or an extended mariachi breakdown, but it's kind of nice to not be able to predict how it is going to pan out from the first 30 seconds.

It's a problem the song shares with 'Greatest Day' by Take That, there's a sense of occasion, a feeling that something enormous and important is just about to happen, a raised expectation that any second now the band are going to launch towards a musical peak which so vividly captures the most exciting time of your life, that you could actually be guiding the song yourself, via a complicated musical telepathy you share with Brandon Flowers, or something.

Sadly - and I do mean sadly - this never actually materialises. The song begins, puffs itself up - accompanied by a sympathetic brass band and some 'tasty' lead guitar work - then it makes a tentative trot down the runway and then just keeps on running until it stops.

And while it's nice that the band have relaxed a bit and toned down their histrionic edge for a song or two, it's hard to escape the idea that they put more work into making this sound like an anthem than they did making it sound like a great song.

Maybe the mariachi breakdown would've been a good idea after all.

Download: Out now
CD Released: May 18th

91Èȱ¬ Music page

(Fraser McAlpine)