European rockers Lunar have knocked out a frustratingly good album in Turbo - frustrating because although it is good, it could have been so much better but for a few things which let it down.

Turbo isn't so much post-rock as it is post-garage-rock, half way between Mogwai and Magic Dirt, which makes it mellow and melancholic like most good post-rock, but less epic, more straight forward. Tracks like Belka I Strelka especially contribute to this feeling, and you can almost imagine Adalita's voice cutting in at any moment with some teen angsty lyrics. That's not to say Turbo is simplistic - it has all the musicality of a good Mogwai album, just less ambitiously styled, with bite-sized pieces rather than album-long meandering sound scapes. Then you hit tracks like Radio Free Interference, which with volume loud and bass up is as driving and forceful as any Mogwai power ballad, but weighing in at under six minutes it is much more digestible than your standard post-rock epic.

However the shortness of the songs on this album, as well as the brevity of the album itself, is one of the problems with Turbo. Good post-rock picks you up and carries you somewhere, but Turbo is too abbreviated to do that well, reaching crescendos without sufficient build up and moving on to the next track before you've finished experiencing this one. It's more like a post-rock sampler than a post-rock album, and lasting just over forty seven minutes it's almost an EP, despite its eleven tracks. Davorova Grana is the biggest culprit: opening with solid bass which eventually underlies the most intriguing guitar riff on the album, Davorova Grana has the potential to be a knock-out track, but it cuts off prematurely at under three minutes.

What there is of Turbo is for the most part really good, and there is no filler as such. However there are two tracks which seriously bug me. Pizza Song, the second track on the album, is a perfectly fine song, but it doesn't belong on Turbo; the lyrics lift this out of post-rock and drop it back into garage rock, and it disturbs the flow of the album, especially if like me you pop Turbo on repeat due to its short length. Don't get me wrong, it is not a bad song, just out of place. Bee-Bop, which closes the album, is annoying for similar reasons: after knocking out an album of emotive, expressive guitar rock, why would you want to sign off with a minute and a half of synthesised electro-pop? It is incongruous in the extreme.

For all my griping though, I really enjoyed Turbo. Pieces like Radio Free Interference and Retard Numerique - the stand out tracks on the album - show you that Lunar have a great sound, and a fantastic songwriting ability. The problem with Turbo isn't that there is actually anything really wrong with it, it's just that there isn't enough of it. In any post-rock release, six eight minute tracks is a lot better than eleven four minute tracks, and if Lunar begin to stretch out their songs and pace them for a longer musical experience, we could see them rise to the top of their genre - they certainly have the skill.

Turbo is a good album, and a hint of far better things to come from Lunar.