Getting overshadowed by your peers: what a shitty deal. We’ve all been there – we’ve all felt that little stomach turn, that pang of half-jealousy, quarter-disappointment, quarter-frustration when people we consider our equals, who others even may see in the same way, just excel in a way that you can’t fathom and you’re left behind in the dust.

New Zealand’s Bailterspace seem to be perennially dust-smattered and shadow-darkened. From their early ties with the incredible Flying Nun Records where they were forced to try to stand out among bands like The Chills, The Clean and The Verlaines through their ‘90s years on Matador rubbing shoulders with the likes of Guided By Voices and Pavement at the height of their powers there’s always been an element of the also-ran or nearly-men about them.

By all accounts though their small but devoted fanbase has buoyed them right up to this, their 8th studio album in a 25 year career. Despite a 4 year hiatus earlier this century Bailterspace still have a place in the hearts of some and for that they must be respected – they’ve certainly earned it.

Sadly, this is not the record to turn their luck or even the heads of the more casual listener. It’s a poor album, weighed down by slipshod production, half-hearted songwriting and sometimes lackadaisical delivery.

Opening relatively strongly with ‘Things That We Found’ and its pleasing, slushy riff, wistful chord changes and whispered vocals buried deep in the mix, you instantly spot some of the main traits of what’s to come: it’s dour, it’s stoned, it sounds good – plenty of evocative guitar noise – but there’s no actual song, no content to speak of. Like many other tracks here, the opener fades out, shambling into the distance.

‘Blue Star’ has a dischordant JAMC charm and some lovely rumbling Drop Nineteens fuzz – but it doesn’t affect in the way good shoegaze always should. There’s no emotional back and forth here. There’s worse to be found with tracks like ‘No Sense’, a sluggish Sonic Youth-by-numbers affair boasting the album’s only prominent, upfront vocal from Alister Parker. Problem is? It’s horrible. It aims for Iggy and lands at punk rock karaoke.

While the three-piece were praised in some quarters of the UK press back in the day and drew comparisons to the likes of the aforementioned Sonic Youth, songs like the entirely lacklustre ‘Polarize’ and their stab at synth on the barely decipherable ‘Meeting Place’ render these comparisons worthless.

By the time you’ve heard them take the riff and drum part from ‘About A Girl’ and essentially roll it down a hill in a bin on ‘Island’ you’ll be hoping for a swift close. It doesn’t come, the album instead meandering through the REM-spoiling ‘Live By The Ocean’ which despite a cracking chorus can barely get out of its own way for long enough to be memorable, the tolerable Velvets of ‘Op1’ and the flat-out silliness of Stones-riffola closer ‘World We Share’ that caps off your listening experience in the style of a sigh that just runs out of air.

Their stab at straight up punk on ‘Dset’ is just unpleasant. It clearly wants to be ‘X’, it’s definitely more ‘Why?’.

This is the tired sound of a tired band who’ve perhaps spent too long in the doldrums to ever really fulfill their potential and scrape their way up to the light. It’s an unsure, unsteady record that seems to actually want to be forgotten. We can do that.

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