on its latest album, the group aims for an entirely more conventional target: Coldplay. But while Athlete can't quite garner a rush of blood to the head, it's still pretty dizzying stuff.  Full text...

Ultimately, the songs here are intelligent, relating more specific personal experiences yet crediting the audience with the ability to understand them, something that marks them out from their less risky contemporaries. A nice evolution.  Full text...

Lord knows what's bumming them out on their second album besides gray skies and such, but they manage swooning song-poetry and Coldplay karaoke over electronics-tinged arrangements that sound very pro forma.  Full text...

On Tourist, Athlete become radical neo-Britpop fundamentalists according to the gospel of "Trouble" and "The Scientist". At times they tell sob stories so terrifically upsetting that even their detractors have trouble keeping tears from jerking.  Full text...

Tourist opens with the plangent piano of “Chances,” the slightly wistful, sideways-and-downwards momentum of the motif lasting 45 seconds or so before drums and strings and guitars and Nellie the bloody elephant crash in like a house falling on the Wicked Witch of the West, like an enormous musical road sign saying “be moved now.”  Full text...