Razorlight
Album: Slipway Fires
Label: Mercury/Universal
Rating: *** 1/2

This album got the crap kicked out of it by the critics when it was released last fall in Britain where Razorlight is perceived by detractors as pretenders to a throne that should still be occupied by the Libertines. Razorlight frontman Johnny Borrell has been pilloried for taking the band in a mainstream rock direction. But on this side of the ocean, Razorlight’s third album just sounds like sound, hook-laden rock. The band does have a knack for it, after all; some of it’s cliched and derivative, some of it’s overwrought, but much of it is also brilliant.

On the web
www.myspace.com/razorlight