English indie-rockers Peace are an infuriating bunch. Their 2013 debut was a promising affair; all early-90s influences and shiny approaches to love, life and happiness. On their Australian tour they proved themselves to be a powerful live act, capable of raining red-hot riffs on punters the length of the east coast. Why, then, is this second effort so excruciatingly dull? Is it the crippling sameness of the vast majority of the 18 tracks? The draining middle-class angst peppered heavily throughout the lyrics? Or just simply, the lack of a good tune or two? The combination of these things doesn’t leave much to be admired, except perhaps groovy single ‘Lost On Me’ and the rougher ‘I’m A Girl’; songs that provide hope that it’s only difficult-second-album syndrome that’s stuck its nose in here. Everything about the painfully atrocious ‘Someday’ and singer Harrison Koisser’s misguided suburban rapping on pseudo-funk sonic-fart ‘World Pleasure’ provide low points, while most of the rest blends into itself with nothing left but blandness. “Try to change the world you live in, oh you, try to make it better for your children, oh you,” he sings on opener ‘O You’ – and that, people, is your cue to dry retch, while closer ‘The Music Was To Blame’ pretty much sums up the whole album just by its title. Being a ‘big’ band is great and being a cult band is better, but unfortunately Peace are neither of these; for now they’re stuck somewhere in the murky middle, filed under “meh”. (Columbia)

For mX