What now for Starsailor? Album number four, and the band named after a 1970 Tim Buckley album find themselves releasing the record here in early 2009, perhaps missing the boat that was 2008, a year in which Coldplay, Snow Patrol and Keane all released albums. As another (admittedly lesser) pillar of inoffensive British-based rock, Starsailor look a tiny bit out of place in the current atmosphere, exacerbated by their rather ham-fisted attempt at a political song on this album, "Stars and Stripes". But for the most part, All the Plans consists of adequate stabs at rousing emotional pop-rock, finished off with the obligatory slow closer that is "Safe at Home". The trouble is that the band's remit is narrow, and they need to do what they do very well indeed to be genuinely interesting - and so failing that, All the Plans is just a bit dull and ordinary.We can see what they are trying to achieve with the opener and single "Tell Me It's Not Over", but the trouble is that stirring as the song is, especially with its surprisingly loud piano opening and heartfelt chorus, it's also deeply incoherent in concept and largely unremarkable in execution. The lack of logic in the song's premise, combined with the clunky, cringeworthy lyric "what a place to seal your fate / a deserted carpark, not even a date" almost completely drowns the song's merits. Maybe it's just me, but if you found out your significant other had been "sleeping with another" in such a place, surely you'd be telling them it was over, rather than asking them to tell you it wasn't over... I digress.There's a nagging feeling throughout that there's just something a bit off about this album. A lot of that stems from the lyrics, which would have benefitted a lot from just being thought out properly, as in the case of the first lines of "Hurts Too Much" - "we all get burned sometimes / lately I've had mine" kind of makes sense, but not really. These lyrical niggles are all over the shop, so there's no point in listing them, but they are distracting and they do detract from the songs. Many of those who are less than devout fans of the band may be looking for a distraction of some kind though, just because these songs, whilst well played and produced, aren't very interesting. There are drums, and guitars, and vocals, but there's no context, no inspiration, and minimal passion. Starsailor have the tools, but there are many other bands able to build far better things with them. Not bad so much as tiresome and sterile, All the Plans isn't an album worth going out of your way to hear. 43%Starsailor on MySpace