Two Door Cinema Club - Beacon

They've taken plenty of drugs, experimented with lucid dreaming and got themselves a big league producer for second album Beacon, but will that be enough to stop Two Door Cinema Club falling into the horribly clichéd second-album-syndrome trap. But we've been here a hundred times before. Indie band gets quite famous, writes a second album, does alright sales wise, and before you know it they're playing in venues the size of your kitchen, and not the nice kitchen you had at your parents house or in halls, but the tiny, smelly kitchen you had in your first rented house, full of mice and the previous tenant's condiments. The Northern Irish boys will be hoping to take the route of The Wombats and The Maccabees as opposed to The Pigeon Detectives or The Holloways.

It's a mixed affair for the trio from County Down. Despite not being revolutionary, their debut album Tourist History was impressively consistent. Catchy riffs and sing-a-long choruses that most bands can only dream of putting together, they were a band that were extraordinarily easy to enjoy. Less so this time. The formula is roughly the same, but what appears on the other end of the equals sign is not. It's apparent that they've matured in both sound and lyrics, but that's to be the case for any band, so to applaud them for achieving the bare minimum that was expected would almost be a touch patronising.

There are still great examples hidden like needles in the haystack, with opening track 'Next Year' and the slow rising 'Settle' proving to be the two high points of the album. But all too often across the rest of Beacon the sound comes across as repetitive and forgettable. While the video to lead single 'Sleep Alone' is imaginative and a bit psychedelic, the track doesn't endear itself in the same way, and for all the lucid dreams Alex Trimble has indulged himself in, it hasn't done anything for his imagination.

It's hard to see the songs of Beacon being used on quite as many BBC Three promos as its predecessor, but maybe that's a good thing. Looking at the Two Door Cinema Club royalties list must be like a who's who of TV shows you've never heard of, and while the pay cheques are pretty healthy, perhaps they designed the album in such a way that it's still retains its pop mentality but not so much that Debenhams will consider it for an advert. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to look behind door number three.

Rating: 6/10