Slipway Fires

iTunes Review

Razorlight’s third studio album is its most ambitiously produced, an often willful turn away from the band’s past. The opening track/first single “Wire to Wire,” finds songwriter/vocalist Johnny Borrell (who shares writing credits on four tracks with since-departed drummer Andy Burrows) turning sharply from the band’s anthem-rock roots into emotive, piano-driven balladry. That new emotional resonance surfaces again on the standouts “60 Thompson” and the slow-burn build-up of “Stinger,” a balancing act Borrell pushes completely over the top (with less success on “Blood for Wild Blood” and “Monster Boots”) before “House,” a paean to his dead father, triumphs by the sheer force of his personality. Ironically, it’s the band’s more familiar material here — infectious, Britpop-suffused tracks like “Tabloid Lover” and “North London Trash” — that takes focus off the album's otherwise more mature, emotionally-challenging thread. Call it a stylistic breakthrough haunted as well by the ghosts of Razorlight’s past.