The Fray: 'The Fray'

Did you get flustered during the brief experimental flourishes on Coldplay's Viva La Vida? Do you prefer Snow Patrol when they're not cranking up their amps? Did you like Keane better before they started pretending to be an '80s pop band? Thank your lucky stars if you're one of those people, because The Fray are back with a second album of hearts-on-sleeves piano anthems. Probably the most unrecognisable act ever to have sold three million records, the Denver four-piece trade in tunes that are low in thrills, but packed with soap opera melodrama and saccharine sentiment.

It feels a bit obvious to criticise The Fray for containing ten songs that sound the same, but the most striking feature about the band's sophomore set is its crippling lack of variety. The rasping croak of frontman Isaac Slade dominates proceedings, while the band never deviate from their stodgy midtempo blend of guitars and keys. It's not surprising to discover that Slade worked in a branch of Starbucks before forming the band, because his group share the same soulless, mass consumption ethic as the coffee franchise.

On 'Say When' and 'When We Build We Break', The Fray work their way from a plod into a gentle gallop, with the latter featuring some fuzzed-up guitars that amount to the sum of experimentation across the entire record. 'Syndicate', with its second-hand lyrics ("All that we know for sure, is all that we are fighting for") and ponderous melody, is all too typical. But the nadir is surely finale 'Happiness'. Built around three-minutes of soppy Slade mumbling, it attempts to burst into life with a backing choir and a few heavy drum bashes, but it sounds so predetermined and over-thought that any joy has been vacuumed out of it.

Ultimately The Fray is the musical equivalent of airplane food. It looks and tastes like something you've seen before, but leaves you feeling nauseous after consumption. The band's debut album took off after title track 'How To Save A Life' found its way on to Grey's Anatomy. Recent single 'You Found Me' repeated the trick, soundtracking trailers for Lost, but away from the blockbuster US TV tie-ins, the group's supposedly stirring tunes are utterly innocuous. You can't knock them for persistence, but creatively The Fray keep blundering into the same brick wall.