It’s easy to draw quick comparisons; to hear an album and instantly follow up with the phrase, “It’s like a cross between”¦”, hence more than two years ago when Hallelujah The Hills released their first full-length album, Collective Psychosis Begone, the initial similarities of their sound to the legendary Guided By Voices and slightly more current The Decemberists soon curdled into hurried comparisons. Thus, this band definitely deserves something more thoughtful than a quick stab-in-the-dark style link.Arguably, the main difference between Colonial Dreams and their previous album is the hidden poignancy found within the vast majority of the songs. Although painted on an abstract canvas, the sheer honesty of Walsh’s lyrics is clear as daylight, often acting to shock the listener with its cool brashness, "I never meant to meet you". This type of candor serves to alienate certain listeners, but on Colonial Drones it’s difficult not to be drawn in by it, as lines such as, "curse this mind control/making me leak these ideas so very slow/I’m an excerpt of an abridged serial/you never had a job so menial/to keep track of track of distractions that impede my path/and pinpoint their origin and slice them in half" beg to be written down and repeated into eternity - like all genuinely good poetry.Throughout Colonial Drones, HTH appear rather maturely like a band that has taken note of its past and has consequently learnt from it. Advice is doled out with a kind of wisdom that comes off as helpful rather than preachy, as on the imperatively titled, ‘Put The Gurus in Charge’, when Walsh explains, "the first thing to know is that you can never go back there" and later concludes with the rather morbidly truthful line, "you were brought here by design and now you’ll live until you die".Although it’s difficult to avoid certain similarities and comparisons in an ever-growing world of music and communication; where websites can quickly access your entire music library and simultaneously offer-up ‘similar artists’ for you to devour like a sticky handed, music-craving Rick Waller, intent on demolishing the proverbial music-conveyer belt, this just isn’t fair on the bands that have put so much time and effort into their respective pieces of work. So, steering clear of the snapshot references many other critics seem so intent on expressing, Colonial Drones, as the title aptly suggests, is a work full of fantasy-like explorations, laden with anthemic choruses and lyrics freely open for interpretation. Essentially, it’s like a cross between ”“ oh wait, no.Hallelujah The Hills on MySpace