Black Swan

by

Athlete

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Athlete was one of my musical "discoveries" of this past year, enjoyable for their accessible but just-different-enough electronic pop-rock sound. Fair comparisons have been made to Coldplay, Keane, and Snow Patrol, so if you like any of those groups and haven't heard of Athlete, you might want to give them a try. Lead singer Joel Pott has a unique and soulful voice that works well on the ballads, a number of worthy ones which can be found here on "Black Swan", their fourth studio release. Indeed, my favorite two tracks on the album are the touching "Black Swan Song" and "Rubik's Cube", a wonderful track that builds masterfully for a great coda to the album. "Love Come Rescue" is a beautiful acoustic ballad that really showcases Joel's voice and has a clean, bare sound that makes for a nice break mid-album. On the upbeat side, "Superhuman Touch" is fun, catchy and breezy, awash in retro-synth sounds and highly enjoyable.

But there are a few lesser tracks that bring down the album as a whole. "The Getaway", "Don't Hold Your Breath", "Light the Way", and "The Unknown" sound too generic and repetitive of some of Athlete's earlier work, and failed to keep my attention through or after repeat listenings. "The Awkward Goodbye" and "Magical Mistakes" are a bit better, but still not especially memorable.

So overall, I found I couldn't give the album more than an average rating. This is a band that certainly has talent and a sound all their own, but they need to work harder on coming up with worthy songs to match.