Pitchfork

Call it Big Wheel pop: Philadelphia's Bigger Lovers make music influenced as much by the detritus of their youth as by the romantic wreckage that's ostensibly the true subject of the their third album, This Affair Never Happened... And Here Are Eleven Songs About It. One song is titled "Ninja Suit", the following track namedrops Bionic Man, and even the word "affair" in the title seems oddly old-fashioned. The four band members are children of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and their songs of failed romance emanate from a shared period nostalgia. However, they don't ape early XTC or prime Cheap Trick, for example, the same way Interpol echo Joy Division. Instead, for The Bigger Lovers, these influences fall in the category of older-sibling bands: groups your big sister or brother played and therefore you thought had to be the coolest.

On This Affair Never Happened, the band comes across as candid and self-effacing-- as well as a little self-congratulatory for being so candid and self-effacing. But beneath the back-patting and the reflexive jibes lies a sober sincerity. The heartache, the romantic confusion, the almost adolescent hopelessness-- it's all very, very serious business. In a sense, it's the flipside of irony: Rather than not caring enough, The Bigger Lovers care so much that they sometimes lose perspective. At times this tunnel-vision romanticism can be endearing in a shamelessly escapist way, a tonic for life's real hurt. On songs like "I Resign" and "Slice of Life", they prove themselves a more-than-capable pop band. Ed Hogarty's guitar cuts through with riffs that are as concise as they are catchy, as Scott Jefferson and erstwhile Pernice Brothers drummer Patrick Berkery maintain a strong pop momentum.

But too often on This Affair Never Happened, the band sounds like they just need to get over it. "Blowtorch" is a humdrum shuffle that tries to sell us lines like, "Black coffee, booze and cigarettes/ Have kept me running on fumes." And who knows what to make of the line, "And it's hard to sleep/ When the shit is ankle deep" from "Hollywood". Additionally, the determinedly inconsequential "No Heroics" brings This Affair Never Happened to a screeching halt midway through, and the record doesn't get moving again until two tracks later, with the dermatological love song "Peel It Away". The album ends with "For Christ's Sake", a Christmastime lament that mixes cloying coyness ("Thoughts stick to my mind/ Like head lice") with a chorus ("Come back to me/ For Christ's sake") whose cleverness undercuts its heartfelt plea.

As a follow-up to the more focused songwriting of their two previous albums, This Affair Never Happened ultimately sounds disappointing and a little hollow, with no real experience behind the sentiments. Maybe if that affair really had happened, these eleven songs might pack more punch.