Sennen’s Age of Denial is an album that has been out in the UK for over a year now. To gain a greater audience, the album is being re-released in the United States. This is an opportune time as the dream/shoegaze movement is gaining rapid strength on these shores. Bands like The Sleepover Disaster, Crystal Stilts, No Joy and Tamaryn are gaining traction culling that distinctly British sound of bands like My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau Twins. Unfortunately for Sennen, Age of Denial might not have been the best intro to make into the American scene.

The album starts off in an amazing fashion with the title track. Urgent, heavy, and just rocking, “Age of Denial” is a great track, one that any shoegaze band would have liked to have written. This is followed strongly with “With You,” which evokes the more dreamy aspects in their sound. The reason why this album does not succeed is the remainder of its tracks. There are certainly hints towards the idea that they could do something truly excellent on this album, but they show that the band is confused in its sound.

Take “SOS” for example. While the song certainly has some shoegaze characteristics and has a particular pop sound to it, the band sounds derivative, reminding me of The Stone Roses, The House of Love, or a like-minded band. This is contrasted with the following “Innocence,” which sounds heavily drawn from the work of Teenage Fanclub. The unfortunate part for Sennen is that Teenage Fanclub did the fey, sad pop lyrics much better than they have here. While I can deal with a sonically troubled band (Salem’s King Night is an album that has an identity problem yet I still like it), the larger problem for Sennen in my mind is that they are a dreadful bore.

Outside of the first two songs, this album struggled to keep my attention. I tried my best to stay engaged and caring about the music that was being made, but there came to be a point—probably around “SOS” actually—that I became very aware of the fact that I was listening to an album. As anyone who listens to enough music knows, the best albums are the ones that transport you away from wherever you are into their world, forcing you to understand their sound and enjoy the environment they’ve constructed. Age of Denial never did this for me. After the strong beginning, the album became a chore to listen to. I waited to see the tracks count off so I could listen to something else, a thing that I never want to happen while I listen to an album.

Given that “Age of Denial” is a genuinely amazing song, I want to see what the band will do in the future. I can only hope that they have figured out what direction they want to go in. I say they follow the road of “Age of Denial,” but they are grown people; they are allowed their freedom. Whatever they do, it will probably be better as a whole than Age of Denial, which only sparkled at times and fell flat during the others.