(Just Music)

If Loner’s second album was a flower, which would it be? Probably one that wilted and split at the merest whiff of a breeze, so delicate are its components. Geoff Smith doesn’t so much sing his fragile numbers as emit their last breaths, branding them with eerily appropriate titles such as ‘Already Numb’ and ‘Lights Which Pass’.

Remember Botany 5? Recall Spain? Those two raged like Megadeth and Cradle of Filth in the context of this tepid affair. Clearly believing they have sculpted shards of beauty, instead, Loner deliver anaemic blobs of brie-like Europop and airy clouds of aural offal.