"I’m ready to conquer your kingdom.” The first line from Punches, the major-label debut from the New Orleans group World Leader Pretend. No point in being humble, right? As you might expect from a band who take their name from an R.E.M. song, the band is more at home sculpting soaring pop songs than juke-joint jazz improvs or Mardi Gras brass marches. Singer-songwriter Keith Ferguson jumps into falsetto range for dramatic effect, and it’s clear he’s spent more time studying the Bono school of earnest declarations than the Michael Stipe class of cryptic, understated crooning. The result brings to mind an earth-bound Jim Kerr. (Remember Simple Minds?) Guitars are AWOL here; instead, skillful arrangements of strings, glockenspiel, sleigh bells, and finger snaps provide the orchestrated backdrop. The disc could use more grooves like the infectious one on "Tit for Tat." But the instrumental "Appassionato" is pretty without apologies, and that’s worth a brag or two.
But damn it if it isn't too much. Almost all the songs try to be staggering, dynamic masterpieces, which leads to a misleading impression of sameness that certainly isn't a problem for the band in general. These guys have song-building chops that rank with the best, but Punches could have benefited from more self-denial in either editing (the two mid-'90s U2 ripoffs that close the album would not be missed) or the inclusion of a few songs that hark back to their darker, dreamier debut, Fit for Faded. But in a retro-obsessed, indie-innundated market, a band that crams too many muscular, sonorous, earnest and ambitious songs on a single record hardly warrants complaint. |