Rieser - The Well Dressed Thief

There's an interlude halfway through this, the debut album from Edinburgh's Rieser, which proclaims that the album you are listening to is a "marvelous musical odyssey". Whether this little distraction is tongue in cheek or not, it must be one of the years biggest overstatements, for The Well Dressed Thief is anything but. What Rieser instead serve up here is 45 minutes of tepid middle of the road guitar pop - devoid of any energy or imagination.

The signs are bad from the get go - opening track Angerflow shows a distinct lack of anger, flowing or otherwise, and despite the ambitious Led Zeppelin style intro the song builds to a distinct anti-climax. Things don't improve and despite the catchy chorus and well written lyrics of The Servants Quarters it still features the same old settings on the effects pedal and the same cliched reverb on the vocals. What the album lacks probably more than anything is a bit of a kick, the guitars sound terrible and are far too low in the mix to be of any use.

It's not all bad news however, the band does show evidence of good musicianship which is a good sign. The intro to 'Sanctuarium' has a hint of Muse about it but the bulk of the song itself is sadly the same old story as before. After the aforementioned interlude things do pick up slightly, but only after the horrendously cliched Rockstar. Like A Whisper is an average ballad but the hint of ska found in earlier track Assassins is put to much better use in the catchy Mes Enfants.

What Rieser would have benefitted greatly from is better production values, for there are signs of life beneath the surface. And if they truly want to take their listeners on a marvelous musical odyssey, then better guitar effects wouldn't go amiss either.

(originally appeared on isthismusic.com)