Who’d be Elliot Minor, ey?

The lads from York can’t win – one moment, they’re in Kerrang! Magazine and getting promptly lambasted for their operatic rock/pop music and their tour supports for McFly; the next they’re all over the Hits music channel, being portrayed as the next McFly.

For many artists, it would be more than enough to see some of the members collapse under the sheer identity crisis that their press coverage is giving them. Fortunately, Alex Davies, Ed Minton, Ali Paul and Dan and Ed Hetherton have stayed on their feet long enough to create an album that shows for now, they’re happy sitting on the precipice.

While their singles (four and counting) are all here, they vary from the good (Parallel Worlds), the average (Jessica, The White One Is Evil) and the embarrassing (Still Figuring Out), and can often be pinpointed as the ones aimed toward the pop market due to their all-too-often desire to be linear rather than epic.

That irritating habit of slipping into a semi-American accent can also be spotted on occasion when their guards are let down, which is a shame as the group prove on their debut album that they’ve got far more going for them than snappy dressing and a false allegiance to Uncle Sam.

Cast your attention toward Lucky Star, for example. Just as it sounds like it’s heading for mediocrity in the form of a tired rock ballad, it snaps back into shape as it continues to grow in size and melody as the choruses stack up. Penultimate track Running Away has single credentials slapped right across it, with its demi-disco beat interspersed within.

It’s the big hitting combination of The Broken Minor and Silently that really show Elliot Minor’s strengths though. The former revels in the over exuberance of the traditional piano and violins duelling it out with the guitars for a lavish curtain call, whilst Silently is frighteningly compelling. Luring you in over its timescale, it draws you into a fantasy world that can’t help but provide imagery an accompanying big screen movie score.

When Alex Davies sings out “I can’t taste the taste of simplicity” on The Liar Is You, a truer description has never been mentioned in the case of Elliot Minor. The album is a collection of pop-rock songs on the surface that run along tried and tested rails, whilst beneath them lays a mammoth valley that’s brimmed with elaborate theatre and circumstance.

Whilst some may find it difficult to get past the McFly tag – especially when it can be argued there are subtle links to She Falls Asleep on the record, for example – it’s worth at least giving them a shot. Put it this way, it’s better that they’re doing something of this scale than trying to mimic The Libertines...