Ultimately the most lasting impression of this Liverpool quartet's belated debute album is how much vocalist Paul Simpson sounds like OMD's Andy McCluskey, though without the latter's convincing passion. And therein lies the problem with this record. The songs are pleasant and melodic enough, set to jangling guitars and a subdued but purposeful manner that owes more than a little to New Order, but Phil Hardiman's production has polished all the life out of them, especially in the flat rhythm section. Lyrically too the songs seem too gentle to make the required impact - songs about the bitterness of life and hard times for innocents, addressed to ragged boys, young soldiers and old sailors, and coloured by the romantic and faintly religious imagery of archangles and hearts of England. Sometimes there's enough feeling to make it work - as in the excellent title track - but mostly this does nothing so much as conjure up the ghost of the Lotus Eaters (of whome Wild Swan Jeremy Kelly was one) - pretty but ineffectual. This LP does grow on you but times are hard and more bite in all departments is required if the Wild Swans are to achieve anything of their own beyond a saintly cult status

Ian Cranna (3 stars)