Athlete, 'Tourist'

“Take all your chances while you can” are the first words to be heard on Athlete’s sophomore album. This is quite literally the sound of a singer savvy enough to understand how the shelf life of any act can be over before its truly begun. The key to survival, a band may reasonably conclude, is to evolve, to grow and to improve upon what was once there. On all these counts, Athlete comfortably achieves success with ‘Tourist’.

The opening track hinted at above, ‘Chances’, has the chutzpah to borrow from label mate Coldplay’s propensity to utilize strings and they pull it off majestically. In many ways, it’s a bold move which could have made or broken them (and, quite possibly, the strings themselves…) by going head to head in the melancholy stakes with the current world leaders in introspection. But vocalist Joel Potts sounds more comfortable and at ease with himself during this record. He may not ever end up sharing space with Gwyneth Paltrow but a legion of loyal followers should easily compensate.

And the reasons for this loyalty must be contained within the music itself. ‘Half Light’ veritably breezes along, carrying you willingly along for the ride, as Athlete experiment with electronic warblings here, a plethora of sounds there and those trusty keyboards, well, everywhere. ‘If I Found Out’ resembles the template in ‘doing’ uplifting so perfectly that you’ll contemplate taking up smoking just to be able to hold your lighter aloft. ‘Modern Mafia’, meanwhile provides a gritty sensibility (“They’re scared of us!”) that is, in turn, counterbalanced by the sweeping ‘Twenty Four Hours’. Best of all, however, is the quite epic ‘Wires’. Written about the time spent in hospital by Potts’s daughter, the track is beautiful and hopeful despite describing how it feels to possibly lose somebody you love. Thankfully, the song has a happy ending. You can’t help but hope for a similar outcome for the band.