Eisley’s latest release The Valley, is the band’s first full-length since 2007’s Combinations. While the new album is good enough to push Eisley to the mainstream masses, it seems a little tongue-in-cheeky. It plays on easy themes such as being above a break up, giving up on love, and the ever-clever needing an ambulance after a broken heart. Music should obviously come from the heart, yet somehow the record sounds like like Eisley simply trying to gain an upper hand in a music genre that grabs hold of anything that’s universally relatable, a position that would make Eisley feel less alone.

But that assessment might be a bit unfair. The Valley isn’t exactly terrible. Musically, it’s done very well; in fact it’s even enjoyable. The progressions are simple and poppy but graspable, digging themselves deep in your brain to stay there for the day. They’ve added numerous amounts of string sections to elevate the melodies, which, shockingly, don’t sound at all forced.

Maybe Sherri and Stacy Dupree’s voices are too cliché. Sure, they’ve got great pipes—this fact can’t be debated—but they’re the kind of pipes that can be found on any album with a female vocalist. The layered and competing vocals between soprano and alto aren’t unique and cute at best.

Combine those mediocre vocals with mediocre lyrics, and you’ve got a deadly combination. “My love has died tonight, I don’t how to own you” sings one of the Dupree sisters, proving the point that they’re at a loss for (good) words. On top of that, after a four listens, the vocals become more irritating than soothing, especially when they’ve got a seemingly endless array of simplistic lyrics: “Sad! I feel Sad!”

Maybe it’s just me, and The Valley just isn’t my cup of tea. This is a possibility. But it feels like The Valley is lacking serious thought and intelligent arraignment. It comes off to the listener as pop album masked as indie-rock. There’s not much there: a few good hooks can be found, like in “Smarter,” where the chorus is big and heavy, hitting hard in the chest, but the rest of the song is choppy, making that wonderful chorus hard to get to, just as it’s hard to get to the core of this album.

**.5/*****

*This review was composed by Xan Mandell