So it goes that New Young Pony Club return after a rather long hiatus, hoping to remind everyone why they were so hotly tipped in the run up to their 2007 debut Fantastic Playroom. The new record is entitled, fittingly, The Optimist; unfortunately, New Young Pony Club haven’t aged well in the slightest; perhaps they should consider a name change?Opener ‘Lost A Girl’ is a promising start, a natural continuation of a sound that, in many ways, they helped define. A strong harmony set over the rise and fall of thrumming bass and pounding drums makes for a compelling chorus, the interplay of rhythm really quite groovy. ‘Chaos’Â features a nice loop feeding into a heavy, persistent bass riff and semi-spoken word vocals.Sadly it’s goes, very swiftly, downhill from there. Even half way through the suspiciously orderly ‘Chaos’, things begin to feel laboured and seriously in need of a little variation, a dynamic drop, a pay off of some sort. Frankly incoherent lyrics such as ‘Strung out on your midas moment/you got the people singing “lalalala/whitewash your life as the lights go down”’ aren’t exactly the perfect antidote to lackluster instrumentation. If anything, you’ll find yourself singing ‘lalala’ to drown out the record.Eponymous third track relies far too heavily once again on their admittedly massive bass sound to carry it forward. After the minute and a half instrumental intro (that barely musters a single hook or interesting dynamic) the vocals prove to be severely lacking in either melody, charisma, or engaging rhythms. It is summarily dull.This problem is endemic to the record as a whole. A heavy bass sound, the odd slightly playful synth riff, and the timbre of vocalist Tahita’s voice is simply not enough to rest ten tracks comprising a forty five minute album on. There are, of course, moments where things pick up a little, but they’re so isolated and lost under what becomes the crushing banality of an unimaginative band, themselves drowned out by the dearth of unmistakable talent in a similar genre. Recommended only to seriously die-hard NWPC fans, and even then you’ll probably want to spotify it first. Put this nag down.