Apex Manor isn’t a band that’s easy to get excited about. After all, the project’s genesis is entirely comprised of snarled, roots-rock janglers written and performed by Ross Flournoy, the primary component of The Broken West – a band that never left much an impression in the first place. So I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising that The Year of Magical Drinking is constituently commonplace, 10 twanged tracks with no real cause for reaction; its melodies unfurl in an easy swagger, choruses patiently wait their turns, and Flournoy’s vocals float in pure phlegmatic bliss – far from any tangible hint of deep-seated ambition.

Tthe twinkled taps and dubbed harmonies of ‘Elementary Ways of Speaking’ and the lazy rollick of ‘Southern Decline’ may shine through the muck, but they’re quasi-highlights at best. Unmistakably draped in guitar-pop cliché and territorial hooks, never coming close to surpassing their scripts – only succeeding against a backdrop of lesser material. The bulk of what Apex Manor displays is entirely replaceable, most of these songs have been written before, and Flournoy isn’t nearly the champion songwriter to breathe a new life into gleefully common-denominator pop-rock. He sorts through plenty of styles; heavy-framed and measured on ‘My My Mind,’ straightforwardly jaunty on ‘Teenage Blood,’ meticulously studio-crafted (and vaguely pervy) on ‘Burn Me Alive,’ but Apex Manor never quite takes on an identity for its own.

I’m sure people will find plenty to love with The Year of Magical Drinking; after all, the world is in a noticeable recession of boozy vagabonds who can arm an acoustic guitar as a weapon rather than a weepy conduit. But that doesn’t stop it from sounding curiously empty. Personally I played it back a handful of times trying to pick up on what I was missing, but five listens in I’m still drawing a blank. If there is something here worth heralding, the investment of extraction is far too obtuse from the far side of the inspiration. Whatever experiences induced a Year of Magical Drinking, it either needs more context or better songs to work as an album.