here’s always plenty of room for another great pop band that can be balanced on the beam between credible indie and lightweight pop rock. Plenty of bands such as Travis, Belle & Sebastian and The Cardigans manage to be successful while at the same time maintain a strong level of credibility. However, where London-based Athlete had it with their single “Beautiful”, they have now lost it with their debut full-length album.

Vehicles & Animals is on the brink of being quite good, but like an unsuccessful Little Engine, it just couldn’t make it. Originally signed to Regal, home to The Beta Band and now, nobody else really, Athlete seemed very interesting early on with their Athlete EP, featuring “Westside”, a song that is just too damn catchy to hate, even though it has one of the most annoying choruses ever (“Whenever you look you can see that everybody wants to be part of the rock scene”). Then they signed to major Parlophone and released “You Got The Style”, “Beautiful” and recently, “El Salvador”; all well received singles. Where the band went wrong is their tendency to make things too “cute” and “neat” with strange little noises on their Casio and humorous lyrics.

Reminiscent of Eels (who I’ve always found to be interesting but often trying too hard to be different), the talentless Stereophonics (boring, MOR nowadays) and the more silly parts of Blur, Athlete’s sound is a wondrous discovery for young teens just getting into “chart indie” or jocks who feel open minded for listening to something a little more complicated than Oasis. For anyone else really, Vehicles & Animals only offers up a smorgasbord of odd, inventive pop music that’s only odd and inventive enough to try and sound less like everything else.

V&A is a very friendly record, but in the way that attracts boring radio stations (the Hall & Oates favoring BBC Radio 2, for instance, loves the band) and shows like Dawson’s Creek or Smallville (which are both favorites of mine, but let’s face it, the music is appalling). Flowing from the beginning to the end, without really losing its scope, it should be rewarded for such an accomplishment, but instead it leaves a tummy ache...like a bad sugar rush.

“El Salvador” and “Beautiful” remain the only real tasty numbers here (depending on whether you view “Westside” as unique or completely phony), delivering worthy portions of justified, friendly pop. The former is a bouncy, enriching rock tune and the latter, is a unexpectedly gentle ballad that could have been written by Badly Drawn Boy without any notice. The rest, as they say, is pretty much crap.