You can say one thing for Mohair: They’re excited to be playing music. The ten songs on their US-debut, Small Talk, are full of power chords and cymbal crashes while vocalist Tom Billington sings with gusto. And while there are glimpses of magic in the record – the Springsteen-esque keyboard that begins ‘L.A. Song’, the all-t00-sporadically sprinkled horns – Mohair sounds like a band too content with having found a songwriting niche to settle into.

The best songs, ‘Stranded’ and ‘L.A. Song’, have hooks. But there too little melodic involvement for a record this song-driven. The vocal arrangements and production are sometimes impressive, but the record doesn’t leave you enough to remember it by.

Small Talk is attractive without being sexy, somewhat-sugary without being pop and loud without really rocking. Not that they need a creed or genre to define them, only that they could use an aesthetic to guide them.