Sometimes you put on an album and a sort of innocence to the music hits, a feeling that the band have made the LP for themselves and if you like it as the listener all well and good, if you don't never mind. Reading the blurb, Ross Royce are a New Zealand band (first for me) currently based in Australia (is this where the naivety has come from?). 'Life Worth Living' is all over the place and pulls on influences from the 70s, The Sweet, the 80s, David Bowie, Styx and, more up to date, the Dead Weather from the Noughties.

The music, as well as being naive, has a happy, inoffensive feel from start to finish and I think that is my main problem with the album. Personally I like the experimental, more extreme and downright in your face to keep me interested, this album plays in the background and drifts along, in the way that a dodgy TV programme plays in the background; it's there but no-one really takes any notice of it. Style-wise there is the obvious nod towards rock but there is a funky feel at times, a more indie feel at others. 

There is nothing wrong with the production, the musicianship or the influences you can pick up but, overall, just because the pedigree is there doesn't mean you're going to get a classy LP, what you get is something that is a pale shadow of what it could be - guess that's where the naivety kicks in??? I would still hazard a guess that this would appeal to the fans of the lighter side of rock; did I say there's also a bit of the Killers that surfaces from time to time? Not for me this one.

www.myspace.com/rossroyce