Annuals – those god-awful books you get at Christmas full of filler and rubbish that you didn’t want, or need to know.

Or not. Annuals are in fact America’s answer to Arcade Fire. Hailing from North Carolina, they’ve managed to fill up their debut album Be He Me with atmospheric music as confusing as it is beautiful.

To say that Be He Me is intense would be to do the band a disservice. From the opening track Brothers, the mixtures of guitars, synths and straining vocals drag the listener into Annuals’ world, a world in which music is to be done properly or not done at all.

As the record progresses, the intensity increases to the point where the bands’ lead singer Adam Baker is screaming, in much the same way as Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst; a gesture which is no doubt admirable, but which comes across as a tad over the top.

The musical ambition of this project is very clear; Annuals wish to achieve something great. This turns into their greatest weakness as well as their greatest strength. Take the third track - the cryptically titled Complete or Completing.

Starting out with a very simple clip-clop drumming pattern and a simple piano melody, this evolves slowly, with guitars, then synths, then more voices, until more becomes far too much and you’re left with a completely overbearing song as well as begging for just the piano again. Less is more; a phrase that Annuals seem to feel doesn’t apply to them.

That is not to say they don’t get it right and when they do it is spectacular; the morose Fair being the great example of this. An eerie organ accompanies the vocals before reaching to a crescendo of sound involving everything that is good about the band.

You may see this as hypocrisy, but it isn’t. Fair is a rollercoaster of a song that takes you with it; Complete or Completing is a rollercoaster where you’ve been left behind.

It’s apparent that the musical influences of Annuals are wide and varied, from the blindly obvious; Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, Bright Eyes, to the less obvious people such as folk legend Nick Drake. The reason these influences are so apparent is because Annuals try and shoe horn them all in, and this may be a mistake; after all you wouldn’t eat all of your favourite foods in the same meal, would you?

Annuals have tried here; bless them they’ve tried, sadly though they have come up short. They’ve tried to create that beautiful record that will change the way that people view the world; they have failed to do this. Instead, they’ve created a record that is too overbearing and leaves you wishing they had simplified everything.