OneRepublic: 'Dreaming Out Loud'

Despite scoring one of last year's biggest hits with 'Apologise', a song that's now been downloaded more than three million times, OneRepublic remain a curiously anonymous proposition. Of course, Timbaland's partly to blame for this: after giving 'Apologise' a fairly unadventurous remix, placing it on his Shock Value album for good measure, the self-promoting beatsmith took top billing when it was released as a single. However, as the band's follow-up track, 'Stop And Stare', beds down in the top ten, the Timbaland proviso becomes less tenable. Snide as it seems to say it, maybe OneRepublic just aren't that interesting?

Sadly, the band's debut album fails to disprove this hypothesis. Offering nearly an hour of earnest, Fray-style piano-rock, with nods to Coldplay and Muse along the way, it's a fairly drab, characterless affair. Largely produced by Greg Wells, an experienced studio hand who's worked with everyone from Lindsay Lohan to Mika, Dreaming Out Loud is dense, layered and modern(ish), utilising drum loops as often as the band's resident skin-basher, Eddie Fisher. This slick, arena-ready sound works brilliantly when OneRepublic write the songs to sustain it - the surging 'All Fall Down' and anthemic 'All We Are' are almost as enjoyable as the two singles - but, elsewhere, it has a tendency to blur the album into a shapeless mass. Many songs, most notably the pretty, gently insistent 'Prodigal', would benefit from a more organic approach.

Of course, a large part of the blame lies with OneRepublic, whose songs, for the most part, aren't very memorable. Dreaming Out Loud is relentlessly one-paced, with only the sombre piano balladry of 'Come Home' offering a notable change of texture. Frontman Ryan Tedder, best known as a songwriter/producer who's crafted hits for Leona Lewis, Jennifer Lopez and Natasha Bedingfield, is a technically proficient rock vocalist - powerful, supple, raspy in all the right places - but he lacks charisma. His repetitive, cliché-ridden lyrics, with their references to "walking on water" and "angels of mercy", don't help matters.

For those who've enjoyed OneRepublic's sturdily-constructed, hook-laden singles, their debut album is likely to disappoint. Nevertheless, Dreaming Out Loud isn't without its revelations: the three or four bursts of melodic brilliance do at least explain why Tedder's songwriting talents are so in demand at the moment.