"The British four-piece are keen to take us back to their early 00s heyday, a time of Met bar table service, where the ladies have a little prosecco and the guys have a nice cold beer. Musically, it's a clunkier approximation of their (comparatively) harder-edged hybrid of pop, hip-hop and R&B; think 2002 low ride anthem Fly By II but on a Megabus budget."
"For most of the album's 13 tracks, the tempo is mid, with the dreary, Westlife-on-a-bad-day Candlelight Fades a particular nadir. The windswept One Last Time and The Day the Earth Stood Still are attacked with gusto, but both feel like Patience-era Take That, while the pleasingly epic opener The Vow is hindered by very un-Barlow lyrics: You're a sweet child of mine / You're like a grape to my vine."
Reflections, the seventh album and fourth since the 2011 reunion, leans heavily on early-00s nostalgia and party-time imagery. The band adopts a clunkier version of their hybrid pop, hip-hop and R&B sound, invoking past anthems but with a lower-budget feel. Much of the 13-track record stays at a mid tempo, producing some dreary moments such as Candlelight Fades. Several songs strive for grandeur yet echo contemporaries like Take That rather than original strengths. The acoustic closer pleads for youthful foolishness, leaving a sense that bolder risk-taking would have served better.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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