The bust of a young girl with her eyes closed and a sticker which reads, “prepare to be blown away” are all we see upon first encounter with the latest Spiritualized release, Let it Come Down.This ambiguous cover and misleading sticker set expectations extremely high, and unfortunately the album can’t get over the bar.

For the 11 tracks on Let it Come Down, Spiritualized front-man and composer/arranger Jason Spaceman employs the same recipe which has worked for him in the past: intricate orchestral arrangements, thick studio layering, and catchy vocal hooks; only this time with less consistency.

The album begins with two straightforward pop songs including the Beach Boysesque track, “Do it All Over Again,” which, to no surprise, is a huge hit in England. These are followed by one of the high points of the album, the existential “Don’t Just Do Something.” The tone of the song, which can be heard in the lines: “don’t want to live but I can’t resist / life ain’t good without cigarettes,” is echoed later on in songs like “Out of Sight,” “The Straight and the Narrow,” “Anything More,” and “Lord Can You Hear Me.”

It’s their inability to maintain this tone throughout the album, which detracts from its success. In the other songs on the album the monumental arrangements become monotonous and melodramatic, while the catchy lyrics become frighteningly cliched. For instance, in the song “I Didn’t Mean to Hurt You,” he sings, “I love you like I love the sunrise in the morning,” and “I didn’t mean to hurt you / the words just came out wrong,” at least he doesn’t “have to say I love you in a song.”

Spiritualized haven’t released any new music since 1997’s Ladies and Gentlemen we are Floating through Space, which never made it out of the shadow of a certain other British supergroup’s release of the same year. The overlooked genius of Ladies and Gentlemen is where all the great expectations for Let it Come Down stem from. However, Let it Come Down is, to use the most obvious pun, a let down.