If, like myself, you consider yourself a stickler for the proper use of grammar, it may be wise to give We Have Band a wide berth. Rather than litter this prose with the green line of distress utilised by Word, I’m going to refer to them as WHB. Hopefully it won’t get too confusing, as it’s also the title of their debut album.

It’s a curious debut album at that. Normally you’ll find a band going all out to convince the record-downloading public that they’re worth a punt, and will definitely be here for the long term. Such is the banality of WHB’s debut that it’s hard to even give them a second listen. Album tracks are given indifference-inspiring names such as ‘Piano’, or ‘Buffet’ to begin with, before WHB become more comfortable with themselves and branch out into the experimental ‘Love, What You Doing?’ and ‘Hear It In The Cans’. The former two are as boring as their names suggest, and it isn’t until we reach the latter that things start to stick. This is when they begin to come across as melodic as The XX, while maintaining the techno beats that made Does It Offend You, Yeah? so addictive.

Much of WHB’s debut seems engineered to wash over without leaving any trace of ever actually being there. It wasn’t uncommon, therefore, to place this in the background and realise that an entire seven tracks have passed by completely unnoticed. The penultimate track, which is actually called ‘WHB’ (maybe they’ve realised that saying “We Have Band” too much can make you sound like Team America’s interpretation of Matt Damon), threatens to get interesting early on, but also fades away before making any kind of impact.

All in all, it’s difficult to get excited about an album you can’t actually get into. No matter how much time and attention you give over to WHB it greets you with a cold stare and distinct lack of interest. It’s almost as if the band themselves aren’t even bothered if you pay them any attention, they seem quite happy to just go about their thing in the background. In some ways, that actually makes them pretty interesting.