“I don’t want to fade out/I want to fade in” vocalist Pete Fijalkowski croons on the track “A to Fade In.” Unfortunately, fading out is exactly what these British alt rockers did shortly after their arrival with Against Perfection. And it’s not hard to see why. Their sound is reminiscent of a crappier Blur with more noise feedback, a direct fallout from the early ’90s shoegaze scene. The rest is typical Britpop, but without the songwriting talent of their more popular contemporaries. The track listing wasn’t devised very smoothly either. It seems like the first half of the album is made up of upbeat rock songs while the latter half are slow, dull ballads.

There are some good ideas here and there, mainly in their most-realized song, “Sunshine Smile” which comes the closest to showing off their sound of shoegaze feedback combined with energetic Britpop—and the song doesn’t sound half bad either. Too bad it’s not on the actual album and was originally only a single. Against Perfection has a good idea here and there, but they never save the overall generic songwriting and average execution.