Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt! is a band whose reputation has been made on their lo-fi-yet-elaborate live shows—performances involving myriad costumes and dancing and encouraged, even demanded, audience participation. It’s something that’s got them noticed everywhere from Diesel to the New York Times, and is assuredly part of the reason they were signed to David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label. Unfortunately, without the aid of performance, the band’s debut full-length (the regrettably titled: I love you! I love you! I love you and I’m in love with you! Have an awesome day! Have the best day of your life!) is too campy and too busy to actually be much fun.

Added to this is the fact the band’s strength is not in its lyrics (“So we go in and sing some songs/Then get up! Go out build snow forts!/Then dance at Dana’s all night long!“ in the cloying “Snow Day,” or the mouthful of a line “It wasn’t the truth, cuz we are John Wilkes Booth proof” from “Fast Forward Regrets”), and that lead singer Neil Fridd’s nasally voice can grate at times. Moreover, when Terror Pigeon focus hard on composition, they fall short: rather than buoyant and light, the songs feel heavy and forced. Instead, it’s when the band settles back, when voices overlap and instrumentation opens up, that it actually achieve the sound it’s trying so hard to get: that is, a bunch of 20-something friends having fun, hanging out, and not trying too hard to be anything other than that. And so, for example, when the group sings rounds of “It’s ok and you do want and your hearts will be ready” and “You’re allowed to be scared, you’re allowed to be frightened” in “Iotdwykirthbr,” the actual joy of making music with a bunch of friends comes through. But these moments, when the effortlessness actually seems effortless, when the enthusiasm is genuine, come sporadically. This makes the album, despite its overt optimism, a bit of tiresome load, filled with sometimes-cutesy, sometimes-ironic, sometimes-arbitrary songs that flit between indie pop and dance-garage without ever asserting what they want or what they really are.

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