CSS – Left Behind

• 23rd Jul 2008

With their first album CSS have blown away the opposition and became notorious for taking experimentation to extremes that would scare other bands. Having raised the bar so high, you’d be expecting them to have worked hard on their new work to push it that little bit higher.

Unfortunately, new single “Left Behind” does not fit any of the above criteria. Put simply, “Left Behind” is mediocre electro-pop with amusing lyrics with lines like “jump up on the table and dance my ass off til I die”. They have toned down the instrumentation, added in some good guitar riffs and given Lovefoxxx’ vocals centre stage. It is all so, well, adequate.

You could look at it as CSS finding a more mature sound, for it certainly is more stable than their earlier work. Or perhaps they wanted to go a little more mainstream, after all their singles haven’t made much impact on the charts this far. But who wants mature from a band that set dancefloors alight and created something just that little bit different? Let’s hope their second album isn’t all like “Left Behind”.