The Mary Janes: “Bored Of Their Laughing” (Hunter S. Records)

Clocking in at around sixty-one minutes, Bored Of Their Laughing should be value for money but unfortunately it often sounds merely self-indulgent and ends up being more of an endurance test than the wonderfully bewitching journey of soundscapes you’d hoped for.

Taken in isolation each tune sounds reasonably strong. The passion of ‘Friends’ is quite intense in its own way while ‘Diamonds’ is about as light as it gets on these twelve angst-ridden and tormentedly-driven numbers. The problem is, however, that when all the songs come back to back, they just sound too much like one another. Compounding this is the way in which every line of every tune gets the same agonised treatment, no matter what the subject matter.

B.O.T.L. is by no means a stinker of an album. Quite clearly The Mary Janes have potential but they’ve a long way to go before they produce music that’s capable of capturing the imagination. They should be wary of using that word ‘bored’ too freely.

• Patrick Brennan