started listening to Soundtrack of Our Lives’ Behind the Music thinking it would be an ultra-serious, symphonic piece of work. I imagined it would sound like the more progressive-rock moments on Spiritualized’s Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space. I was expecting a drawn out, six-song-but-still-78-minutes psychedelic wall of sound. Everything I knew about the band led me towards these assumptions.


For one, they’re called Soundtrack of Our Lives. Their album cover looks mystical and reflective. They’re a six-piece from Wales. Plus, I believed the NME when they called Soundtrack "the best post-everything six piece space rock band in the history of the eardrum." By the description, I thought Soundtrack would sound like Godspeed You Black Emperor. Reflective and kind of bloated, you know.


So I bought the record, and it turned out that as usual, the NME has its head up its ass. Soundtrack of Our Lives is not post-everything. It’s the furthest thing from post-everything, in fact. If it must be thought of in terms of time, it’s pre-everything. It sounds like the Beatles.


Maybe I’m wrong, or uneducated, but Behind the Music sounds like standard issue jangle-pop to me, with certain elements of 70's psychedelia seeping through a few of the tracks.


I guess it’s pretty good. I guess. It’s nothing new, and it’s not even fun or carefree enough to be considered a breath of fresh air into a preoccupied music industry. Soundtrack sound like Definitely Maybe era Oasis, while the general vibe of the album sounds like the missing link between Blur’s self titled fifth record and 13. The band will fit right in alongside the up and coming stars of 2002 like the Vines and the Coral. Don't get me wrong, Soundtrack is okay for what they are- derivative as hell (the intro riff from "In Someone Else’s Mind" is stolen from "A Fool on the Hill" and sped up).


What makes me like them less than their contemporaries, though, is that they seem awfully presumptuous about their relevance. Yes, they’re quite accomplished over there in Wales, but Behind the Music seems to assume that the tunes (that’s what they are) on this record are somehow important. "And we might just blow you away," promises Ebbot Lundberg on "Mind the Gap" in an earnest, self-righteous croon. I mean, at least the Hives are funny about their arrogance.


I’m not saying Behind the Music isn’t an enjoyable record. In its best moments, it’s fabulous- melodic, emotional, and God bless their efforts, even a little relevant. "Ten Years Ahead," for instance, sounds like a little like "Norwegian Wood" in its instrumentation, but at the same time, it’s one of the only songs that sounds like it could be made only by this band. While the rest of the album is littered with sarcasm, irony, and failing tongue-in-cheek humor, "Ten Years Ahead" is honest, direct, and without pretense. The next song on the album, "Still Aging," is just as good. It’s simple, and while its lyrics are built on the same sort of weird time-traveling motif that makes the rest of the album tedious, Soundtrack pulls it off better on this one. These are the stand-out moments of Behind the Music. The rest of it just isn’t as necessary as the members of Soundtrack think it is. But when was the last time we've heard of a modest pop star?