Album Review: Science & Faith by The Script

"I'm standing under a white flag," sings Danny O'Donoghue, positing his Dublin trio as inheritors to the Emerald Isle's greatest band. The Script have enjoyed Euro-chart success with a mix of lite rock, rap rock and Guinness-informed crooning they call "Celtic soul" — at once soaring, melancholic and treacly. Their second disc's big ballad is "For the First Time," about boozing your way through Ireland's recession.

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This Dublin trio's Sting-soundalike leader, Danny O'Donoghue, says the follow-up to their 2m-selling debut was inspired by "the journey from a feeling of devastation in the pit of my stomach", which might prime you for Leonard Cohen-ish weltschmerz, rather than manicured Celt-rock. O'Donoghue's sincerity as a writer is plain – the single For the First Time reveals his guilt at being successful while friends are suffering from the collapse of the Celtic Tiger – but the production is such a high-shine, epic affair that it all sounds incredibly pedestrian. Mid-tempo guitar rock prevails; so does O'Donoghue's way of raspily soaring through choruses as if his voice has broken free from its moorings.

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The world of adult contemporary rock can often feel like the aural equivalent of nondairy creamer — presweetened and emulsified for easy digestion, if not good taste. Still, a taste it is, and even as James Blunt and the Script induce cornea-straining eye rolls in some, they also bring lite-FM pleasure to millions. Those millions may be hard sold, though, on Blunt’s third and latest album.

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BRAIDS “Native Speaker” (Kanine). In one of art-rock’s unwritten rules, the patterns of Minimalism are usually paired with cosmic or cerebral musings. But it doesn’t apply to Braids, a four-member band formed in Calgary and now based in Montreal that has just released its debut album, .

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