Album Review: Outlands Deep Sea Arcade 2

It's been a long time coming for Sydney's Deep Sea Arcade. Their debut album Outlands arrives three years after their first EP release, with a slew of triple j-supported singles filling the space between. With so much time and support in planning their first full-length strike, you would expect nothing less than a bull's eye hit from this lot.

And sure enough, things start out fairly promising. Although the album's title is a direct reference to a fictional place from a Jean-Luc Godard film, the music has a lot more to do with the very real city of Manchester. Seen No Right and Granite City pop with a Doves-y exuberance while recent single Girls struts its stuff with the baggy psychedelia of The Stone Roses. Elsewhere the album delves deeper into the Manchester legacy, rekindling the likes of Herman's Hermits and The Hollies on tracks such as Steam and The Devil Won't Take You. On the face of it, Outlands is one suicidal singer and an E-popping hype man short of a Hacienda.

Perhaps disappointingly though, Deep Sea Arcade have succumbed to the temptation of including all their old singles here, something I like to call John Steel Singers Syndrome. A debut album is a chance wipe the slate clean, which Deep Sea Arcade had indicated they were doing with sonic about-face Girls last year. It's not that Lonely In Your Arms and Don't Be Sorry don't fit in here – although they're by far the most derivative tracks – but their inclusion suggests there was nothing better to go in their place. And from a band who seemingly had all the time in the world to piece together their debut album, a throwback to 2009 just seems a stretch too far.