Sine Star Project Building Humans

Like Mice Parade and Narcotic Thrust before them, Sine Star Project is an anagrammatical take on its chief architect, in this case one perhaps-already-pseudonymous Peter J Croissant, and, given both that particular affectation and the fact that he's been on or near his share of decidedly askew fringes for well over a decade now, even coming close to something of a breakthrough during a mid-decade stint with One Little Indian, he's not one for shying away from being a trifle on the puzzling side.

This is all well and good in theory, of course – better to be bewildering than, say, Babyshambles, after all – but it doesn't half make Building Humans a frustrating listen. Croissant has exceptional rock instincts (indeed, there's an unfashionably affable aggression to his live work), but he's so concerned with confounding that he's forever allowing himself to be diluted. Though, on saying that, there are moments here where the orbit-escaping magic of The Mars Volta or, even more noticeably, Muse is at least within his grasp, and, indeed, the sinister whinnying of Brown Bread may be the one instance where he actually attains it, and there are clear indications that, vocally, flights of Buckleyish fancy are certainly up for consideration (with Little Bird proving a particularly bold saunter towards this territory).

So why, then, does the whimsy card keep being played? Take The Temptress, for example; starts out mighty tempestuously, but soon gets entangled in kitsch pseudo-continental keyboards and pier-end retreading of I Am The Walrus, which is inappropriately unsexy. And then there's Bleeding Like A Dog, which has a bit of a think about being a genuinely grandiose endeavour before deciding that, no, instead it'd sooner resemble the work of one of the more forgotten Britpop bands that disappeared sharpish once Oasis had grasped the ascendancy over Blur. Jocasta, perhaps, or Octopus.

In fact, this just makes it all the more infuriating when the tremendous double whammy finally arrives. Christmas Carol For The Dead, with its subdued church keyboards, gentle underpinning brass and waves of minor-key musing, is another abrupt left turn but an absolutely gorgeous one, while Cathedral continues in a similarly beatific vein that suggests there may well be some Sigur Ros hovering near the Croissant stereo, and quite right too. Moreover, if he'd seen fit to start the album with this pairing, it'd elicit a lot more sympathy; as it is, Building Humans is testament to an evident talent cursed with too many ideas and not nearly enough follow-through.