Dogged by ill-luck and legal problems, Highspire's debut album arrives three years after their formation. With feet firmly rooted in the dreampop camp they have at least come up with a new sub-genre of "Groovegaze". Half of this album is very good indeed. 'Until The Lights Go Down' has all the essential ingredients: soaring, effects-laden guitar and an impassive performance from the frontman. 'Believe' is loud and echo-dominated; it also coaxes some great ululating vocals from Alex White. 'Skies You Climb' completes a great triple salvo, this time a simple acoustic guitar figure is slowly swamped by distortion. So far so good; a useful exercise in bringing the likes of Slowdive in to the 21st Century but the material sags a few too many times in the middle of the album with too many tracks recalling Ride but not deviating enough from their formula to make their own sound identifiable. That said 'Portsmouth' steps into Massive Attack territory with its digitally enhanced sound, 'Vesperbell' swings like The Charlatans and the final two songs ('Love Me Or Love Me' and 'Turn For The Worse') have an intelligent ghostly quality to them. This could have been an excellent 40-minute album but instead it's an inconsistent - albeit promising - 70 minutes.