This album teeters on the edge of pretension, staying just enough in the realm of earnestness that it’s rather impressive a group of immensely young British guys could write an album so sophisticated in its sound.

It sounds like a band of four guys—well, five if you count guitarist Rob Dean, who was one foot out of the door during GTP’s production—desperately trying to be better than the sum of their inspirations. Their previous album Quiet Life, while good, hardly sounds like anything more than a little bit Velvet Underground, a little bit Roxy Music, and a little bit David Bowie. Gentlemen Take Polaroids sounds like a group of young guys trying hard to take their… More