Embrace: This New Day

Published: 10:38 AM March 30, 2006

Updated: 8:19 PM February 22, 2021

THE Marmite of the indie-pop world, you either love Embrace or hate em – very few occupy the middle ground. Fortunately for the Leeds lads, enough people love Marmite to send album highlight and first single Nature s Law near the top of the charts. So fo

THE Marmite of the indie-pop world, you either love Embrace or hate 'em - very few occupy the middle ground.

Fortunately for the Leeds lads, enough people love Marmite to send album highlight and first single Nature's Law near the top of the charts.

So for the love/hate crowd, This New Day is classic/formulaic Embrace - huge sound, a backing choir to boost/mask McNamara's earnest/limp singing, and catchy/derivative melodies that will be loved by Mondeo Man/shouting drunkards on football terraces.

But the odd deviation from the Embrace path (in the looser, jamming Sainted and heavier, moodier Even Smaller Stones) is promising/too little too late.

Me? I'm on the fence. 3/5