Conditions
The Temper Trap
Score:37
Reviewer: Ed Butler
Label: Liberation Music (Australia), Infectious (UK), Glassnote (USA)
Reviewed: Jul 22nd '09, Released:2009
Melbourne’s Temper Trap seem custom-built to set a hardcore music fan’s snobbery gland throbbing. Overproduced to a Coldplay/Kings of Leon-esque sheen, big vocals, big choruses, big photo of a head on the cover that clearly references Boy, the album all but comes with dozens of ‘EPIC’ stickers slapped all over it.
The fact that this kind of music seems designed to infuriate the music press could almost be a form of pre-emptive defence. It’s so uncool to diss a band merely because they take their cues from a spiritual school featuring dross like Snow Patrol as alums. However, on Conditions, that isn’t the problem. In such a blatant effort to court wide-ranging, multinational success, the album has been brutally robbed of almost anything individual and interesting.
Sure, there is one certain highlight. ‘Sweet Disposition’ is what happens when the planets align, and Temper Trap’s cosmic ambitions merge with a thumping, kick-drum driven chorus to deliver a truly uplifting track that is impossible to ignore. But that’s about it. The rest is, unfortunately, boring, but not for want of trying, though.
So many efforts are made to tick the ‘epic production’ boxes that songs with some measure of potential are swamped in a turgid sea of over production, buffed to a glossy lustre. On ‘Love Lost’ the handclaps are so clean as to actually sound like an extension of Toby Dundas’ drum kit. According to their press pack, the Temper Trap “is noted for its atmospheric sound, featuring grand guitars set to pulsating rhythms.” It’s unclear how grand and pulsating Conditions is, but it certainly lacks grandeur or a pulse. Listen for it during a bad radio countdown near you soon.
