A repetitive album

Danish band Grand Avenue recently released their third album, titled The Outside, and if you are a Coldplay fan then this new long player is likely to be just your thing.

So similar is The Outside to a Coldplay record that at times when you are listening it is hard to believe it isn't Chris Martin on vocal duties.

The band's origins

Grand Avenue, who come from Copenhagen, were founded in 2001 and they managed to catch the eye of record giant EMI with the release of a single called What's On Your Mind in 2003.

Thanks to the interest of EMI, the four piece group — Rasmus Walter-Hansen, Niels-Krisian Baerentzen, Marc Stebbing and Hjalte Thygesen — were able to release their debut album later that year.

Their albums

Fast forward two years and their second album, She, which was recorded in New York with producer Bryce Goggin, came out.

Now they will be hoping for global success with The Outside, but whether this record is good enough to make them superstars is doubtful.

Rating the new album

The Outside is by no means a bad album, but it lacks the sparkle that is needed to elevate it above all of the competition.

So many of the tracks sound the same as each other, the jangly guitars often dominating and seeming to hardly vary from one song to the next.

There are soaring choruses aplenty — it is just that they are barely distinguishable from each other. When listening to the record, I kept thinking that I was re-hearing songs from earlier in the album.

A few of the tracks are slightly more distinctive, including You Please Me and Anything That's You, which stands out for its breathless insistency and its more jagged, rougher guitar work.

But it is not until the last song, Ordinary, that there is a real change of tempo, with the pace slowing down considerably. The vocals are performed with very little accompaniment.

If the band had tried to produce more songs that like this one departed from their standard formula, adding some variety to the album, they could have produced a much better record.

Coldplay still on top

But they didn't, so Coldplay's place at the top of the alternative rock pile seems pretty safe for the moment.