From the opening chords of “Majestic Lovers,” the first track off My Pet Dragon’s second full-length album, one is immediately reminded of The Joshua Tree-era U2, the epic late ’80s album that propelled the band to super-stardom. Textural guitar playing accompanied by ultra-tight drums and extremely polished production lend the comparison worthy, and then you hear lead singer Todd Michaelsen’s voice, which too draws comparisons to Bono’s mid-ranged croon. On top of this are vague lyrics about love and praying and feelings and the immemorial passing of time, and I’m then reminded of why I never really liked U2 to begin with.

I guess what turns me off is a complete lack of subtlety. The old literary adage of “showing and not telling” is promptly vomited on by Michaelsen. Lines like, “I remember when you were drunk dancing on the stars,” “an electrical storm passed from me to you,” and “I get lost in the clouds when you are around” are intentionally ambiguous to both experience and real emotion, and are infuriatingly unoriginal. Halfway through the album I felt like I knew exactly what he was going to say around every turn, it was just a matter of putting the two most common rhyming words on top of each other. “Siren,” which appears on the album under the guise of an acoustic love song to break up the monotony of the rest of the album, is the closest thing to heartfelt and true. But it too falls short with lyrics like, “Baby you were so kind/That I had to make you mine/You came out of nowhere/somewhere divine,” followed by something about a green dress “stopping time.”

It’s upsetting because it isn’t for a lack of effort that this album fails to please; it’s for a lack of patience. Obviously Michaelsen and company are creative, and if the album’s many schizophrenic tropes are indicative, they have plenty of ideas. Every segue to a different idea, though, seems to highlight a lack of ambition and a desire to crank it up and turn it out. The title track and last song exemplifies this ambition when the chorus climaxes with, “The mountains and cities/crumble back into the ocean, back into the sea.” Really?

Despite my incendiary take on the bands new album they have been receiving a ton of press hype and positive reviews for both their album and their live shows, which leads me to wonder if maybe I just don’t get it. So check it out for yourself and let me know who’s really full of shit.

(Gimme That Sound, no address provided)