ALBUM: Kodaline 'Coming Up For Air'

Rating:

Kodaline, the Dublin-based rock quartet who have been compared to the likes of U2, Keane and Oasis, are set to release their second album, Coming Up For Air, following the success of their debut, In A Perfect World. With recording starting just after the release of In A Perfect World – which sold 350,000 copies and reached No.1 on the Irish album charts – Coming Up For Air was complete eight weeks after their debut album’s release; as singer Steve Garrigan said, “It happened so quickly. A lot of the songs were done live in the studio, on the spot.”

Coming Up For Air starts brilliantly, ends fantastically but slips up a bit in the middle. Opener, ‘Honest’, is an upbeat indie rock track that builds quickly to the beautiful, heavy and heartfelt peak of the chorus, in which Steve Garrigan’s vocals ooze raw emotion and give us a taste of the deep lyrics and ‘honest’, genuinely emotional vocal mastery, yet to come. These strong lyrics and genuine vocals are shown again in the soft, downtempo track, ‘The One’: “You make my heart feel like it’s summer, when the rain is pouring down”.

Autopilot follows, a similarly slow, yet more indie pop track, with a catchy and memorable chorus, “The way that it was before, is all that you’re looking for / you just need to take a step back, is autopilot kicking in?” Human Again, a heavier indie rock, guitar-based track, also has a memorable bridge and chorus, sounding very U2-esque.

The album begins to lose its way on the road to perfect album status between tracks four and eight, as, these middle tracks were for the most part, forgettable. ‘Unclear’, a soft, slower track would sound impressive live or acapella, however it didn’t stand out amongst the other slower songs of the album – a problem that’s similar to that of the uptempo, indie rock ‘Coming Alive’, that also got lost amongst songs similar to itself that the album boasts. ‘Lost’ has the makings of a great track but lost its potential to be so, as it started off very soft and Fleet Foxy, grew increasingly heavier with the addition of a lot of guitar, but then seemed to self-consciously stop itself from amounting to more, as was expected and hoped for.

The album then got back on its course of brilliance with, ‘Ready’ – a strong, upbeat, Killers-like track, with lots of guitar, strong vocals and the kind of chorus you could envision being chanted in an indie nightclub (“I’m ready, I’m ready for it”). This is by far the best track on the album, as it’s easy to sing, tap or drum-on-your-desk along to. ‘Better’, is a brilliant indie folk track with a lot of acoustic guitar and some heartfelt lyrics (“does it make you feel better? Cause it’s making me worse”), which Steve Garrigan sings in an authentic, genuinely hurt and emotionally worn down way, shown again in the slow, piano-based ‘Everything Works Out In the End’.

But with closer ‘Play The Game’, Kodaline may have reached their peak so far, offering a strong sing-along, guitar-heavy, indie rock track with big-hit potential: “Nobody’s gonna carry you, try harder, get smarter, dream bigger and play the game”. …Nobody can deny them of living by their own rules.