To call an album a "grower" is usually to damn and blast it with the faintest, palest, most anaemic kind of praise. "Growers" are albums that only the most dedicated Spacemen 3 fans with big sets of headphones and big girlfriend-shaped expanses of free time can enjoy. They signify a loss of ideas and crude, ugly attempts to paper over the gaps with extended jams and intrusive studio trickery. They signify that most dreaded of journalistic cliche, the difficult second album.

"The American Adventure", The Electric Soft Parade's second album, is a grower. It's also one of the albums of the year. Nearly half the length of their glorious debut, "Holes In The Wall", it picks up where its predecessor left off with the growling slide guitar and lyrical introspection of "Things I've Done Before" and for the next thirty minutes or so continues to push back the boundaries of what that much-maligned genre known as indie can do.

While the British music industry runs around the world like a flock of headless chickens looking for The Moldovan Strokes or The Samoan White Stripes here on their own doorstep is the most precious and beautiful band Britain has produced since Super Furry Animals (who they resemble most in the overlapping vocal harmonies deployed to haunting effect on the title track). Comparisons with The Strokes are obnoxious but pertinent. The brothers White are never satisfied with one sound for long and each of the nine tracks on display here bristles with moments of melodic genius, each of which could easily form the basis of a song in its own right, a merit best displayed on the album's high point, "Lose Yr Frown" which ricochets back and forth between a Kinks/Beatles style jaunty Britpop chorus and an alternating angular/muscular guitar-led verse.

Perhaps the main barrier to instant appeal is the lyrics. Lacking the directness of some of "Holes In The Wall"'s more powerful moments ("There's A Silence", "Why Do You Try So Hard To Hate Me") it opts for a more abstract approach. Vague images abound which could relate to the state of the post September 11th world or could be talking about something completely different. Or perhaps both. Of particular note are the lyrics about "I wouldn't like to fly today/ Look at the clouds" in "The American Adventure" or "Chaos", opening with "Lift your head, they're a thousand miles away/ Lift your heart, the sky's not coming down today".

At just over thirty-five minutes, repeated listens of this album can be slotted into the windows in your schedule between dinner-dates, tennis matches and feeding the cat so there's no excuse for not giving it the time. Like sex, the first time round leaves you wondering what the fuss is about, but go round again and a whole new world opens up before you. -Ian Martin, Oct.29.03

The American Adventure