If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Gray Waves is an album chock full of adulation. The Twin Tigers don’t just wear their influences on their sleeves, they wear them all over: they’re dressed to the nines in them. There is little here that has not been done before. A more generous way of putting it: Twin Tigers are a band born too late—all the good ideas were already taken. But a more truthful way of summarizing their effort would be to say that this is a very derivative album, and that Twin Tigers are left lying in the wake of the bands they’ve copied, mere shadows.

Case in point is the first track (“Passive Idol”), which after a deceptively exciting intro, gets down to the business of channeling Boy era U2, right down to the drums and the simplistic Edge guitar lines. At one point, you’re sure that the band is going to start singing “If you walk away, walk away, I will follow.” In fact, the days after listening to this album, I went away humming “I will follow,” which isn’t exactly a tribute. You want to be remembered for the band you are, not the one you sound like.

“Everyday” shows that Twin Tigers is yet another band that has listened to the Strokes and thought to themselves, “hey, with the right equipment and distortion on the mic, I could do that.” But the effort fails—not because the Strokes sound doesn’t work, but that it doesn’t work with the Twin Tigers, they just aren’t the Strokes, and “Everyday” just isn’t as good as your average Strokes song. The track has no structure; it just builds and builds. There’s no complexity beyond the insistent vocals and the loud guitars.

I could go on and on citing examples. “Watershed” returns to faux-Bono, with a bit of the Killers mixed in; there are other moments in the album where the Twin Tigers clearly try to channel the anthemic sound of the Arcade Fire (as in the opening to “Feathers”). But more than the obvious second-handedness, there is a lack of sophistication on the album as a whole—another manifestation of unoriginality. Songs use the same beats, and the guitar solos are uninspired. The vocals consistently maintain the same drone, over and over. The lyrics, when they are intelligible, are nothing special. “Sexless love” works great as a song title, but the song itself doesn’t deliver on the promise of its name. The singing on it is more like yelling than anything musical. And again, the lead vocalist is doing his best Bono impression. I’d rather have the real thing.

The first time I listened to this album, I was running and the right side of my headphones broke. I was stuck listening to Gray Waves through the left speaker only. And the funny thing is, it actually sounded pretty good: the album was dark, brooding, and even a bit mysterious. This, I thought, was a band willing to experiment and change things around a little. It was as if the sound was coming from another world, far away.

When I got home and listened to the album on stereo, however, the intrigue of the first listen had disappeared entirely. This was just another band, trying to sound like any other band. The freshness of the left-speaker-only version was lost when right side came in, making boring what initially sounded so new and daring.

Don’t get me wrong: the album I heard the first time wasn’t that great either. But it was at least interesting. It seemed to show a band willing to take its influences and then twist them into something new—something this album, to its severe discredit, adamantly refuses to do.

Track List:
1. Passive Idol
2. Red Fox Run
3. Everyday
4. Watershed
5. Sexless Love
6. Gray Waves
7. Feathers
8. Automatic
9. Crystal Highway
10. Island