Filed under "Albums to Buy for My Girlfriend", Songs To Love and Die By is a down-tempo club trot you could use to wind a party down or to play body politics on the couch with a date if nothing happened while the DVD was on.

There’s not much wrong with the record, but it’s pretty by-the-numbers—it’s too bad Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s not on the air anymore, because this band is what they would play during the brief serious moment in the last fifteen minutes of every episode. The sound is professional but undistinguished and largely unvaried. Guitar distortion is predictably subdued, the lyrics are strictly off-the-shelf, and Juliette Beavan’s voice while serviceable enough is one of the reasons every teenage girl in the world is secretly convinced she can sing. The occasional conceit creeps its way in but shows too little effort to have been worth bothering. ("I don’t love you anymore/ I don’t miss you/ I’m a liar." Oh ho! Almost got me there!)

In short, if you buy this record you won’t hate it. In fact, you won’t think much about it. It will wend its way in one ear and out the other in a pleasant enough way without sticking to anything. If you listened to Massive Attack’s Mezzanine so many times that your girlfriend won’t let you play it in the car anymore, this disc will buy you some time before you sneak Mezzanine back into your glovebox. And if you’re still on the fence, try before you buy—I’m sure you’ll just need to wait for the next sex scene in The OC.

Rating: 6 out of 10

RIYL: Portishead, VAST, Massive Attack