Everything Starts Where It Ends

Album Review

Delayed significantly by Lovedrug's abortive leap to the majors (they were released from their Sony BMG contract before they ever released a note for the label) and subsequent return to the indie that released their first album, Everything Starts Where It Ends doesn't suffer from the behind-the-scenes drama. Less self-consciously emo than 2004's Pretend You're Alive, Everything Starts Where It Ends maintains lead singer Michael Shepard's sensitive-guy persona, but in a much more assertively pop-oriented context. The combination of Shepard's occasionally mannered vocal delivery and the unapologetically radio-friendly leanings of the arrangements doesn't always work: his weirdly strangulated vocals on the thumping "American Swimming Lesson" hobble a potential fist-pumper of a song, and he strains for a Thom Yorke effect on the atmospheric first single, "Happy Apple Poison," but doesn't quite hit the mark. But at the album's most effective, as on the dramatic "Ghost at Your Side" and the glam-rocking, piano-driven pop nugget "Casino Clouds," Lovedrug marry the pop smarts of contemporary sensitive English lads of the Coldplay stripe to a more muscular American guitar rawk sensibility, a combination that largely avoids the excesses of both. Everything Starts Where It Ends isn't a worldbeater of an album, but it's a significant and encouraging step forward from its predecessor.