Mmm, marshmellows. Fluffy, fluffy marshmellows. Ester Drang’s third album, Rocinate, sounds like a big pink fluffy marshmellow. Marshmellows are nice, in small doses, but they make you sick if you eat too many of them. And if you’re like me, you like your marshmellows burnt to a crisp with the insides melting all over the place and burning the bejeebies out of your tongue. I like my sweeties with a bit of bite.

Unfortunately, this album has no bite. Rocinate makes for a mildly enjoyable listen, but fails to connect or leave any impression with me. If you were to sum this album up into one sound, it would be a vaguely pleasant, distant drone which sits comfortably in the back of your mind and makes very little impact, drifting in and out of your life, leaving barely a trace.

Ester Drang would probably like to think of themselves as an experimental art-rock band, however there’s nothing particularly ground-breaking about this album. There is a dense layering of sounds and some great dynamics which indicates the band are serious about their music. There are many different elements at play – soaring ethereal ballads, jazz instrumentation, pop rock, disco style beats, and subtle 80’s flavours, which all play a part in this breezy, introspective album. It’s musical influences are drawn from a wide variety of sources, yet their sound lacks definition.

The opening track Come Back Alive starts strongly, with keyboard orchestration introducing a thundering upbeat rhythm and thick bass reminiscent of disco. It’s slow dance beat perches precariously (and impressively) somewhere between a dance pop hit and a rock song, with punchy, engaging instrumentation. However the song quickly degenerates into a woeful and repetitive melody once the droning singer starts contributing. Despite a quick left turn where the song develops into a hypnotising wistful piano ballad, the song still fails to grab me.

Right about here my fingers start getting itchy for the ‘skip’ button. In fact, it hovers above the button for most of the album, which blends into one big droning ambience as the tracks unfold. The melodies all seem very similar, and the songs seem to lack personality– even after repeated listens, there is nothing very distinguishing about each song to give it character and make me identify with it on a personal level.

My fingers relax for a while when I hear the guitar intro to Everyone is a Victim, which is essentially an airy pop song spiced up with some punchy twisting distorted guitar and horns. However, my digits quickly return to tense mode once the singer pipes up.

Both the production and variety of instruments used on this album are impressive, yet I simply can’t get into it. By the time I get to Caledonia, I’m getting quite bored. The fact that I enjoy the instrumental track a bit more than the rest of the album indicates that it’s probably the singing which puts me off most of these songs. What eventually dawns on me is that I really don’t like this guy’s singing style at all. The man behind the mike sounds like a giant bumblebee who is seriously in pain, and wants everybody to hear about it.

Overall, it’s a pretty ambitious album which makes a good show of trying to explore and exploit the finer points of these rather light-weight songs. However it lacks the songwriting spark, depth, and emotional charge required to elevate it above mediocrity. It’s got pop moments, jazz moments, experimental, ambient, electronic, and rock moments, but the sum of these parts unfortunately doesn’t make for anything spectacular.