So why when it comes to making that sophomore recording, do so many bands totally drop the ball? You can say it's pressure, you can say it's trying to live up to some high standard that previous efforts have set, but really, in most cases those things just doesn't stack up. No matter how much you want them to.

We Are Scientists' debut was an exuberant burst of post-punk indie-pop, with a job lot of brain-scramblingly good choruses and hooks that would impress Abu Hamza during J.M. Barrie appreciation week. It was an album that dug in and bounced across your cerebellum until you simply gave up fighting it.

But the second album is easier to resist. With Love And Squalor partied like it was 1999. Brain Thrust Mastery is getting an early night to make sure it isn't late for work tomorrow. You can kind of understand that. We ain't as young as we used to be, so maybe it's time for a bit of contemplation. We'll keep the good bits, dull the pace slightly, ease into something, gulp, more grown up.

Understandable, but not advisable. Because in growing up, in calming down, it's all got a bit dull. Sure, there have been personnel changes afoot, drummer Michael Tapper departing to do, errr..., something else. But as a man once commented, it's hardly Paul leaving The Beatles is it? Christ, it's not even Paul leaving Oasis. It may have contributed to a darkening mood, but it can't explain where that inner geek went. The one which bounced from pillar to party like The Strokes' lab partner.

You miss that guy. The one who didn't understand what this whole thing was about, but still had enough energy to scream they'd been hit. The guy of Brain Thrust Mastery is either droningly depressed and riddled with self-doubt (Ghouls), in desperate need of taking the first of twelve steps (After Hours) or determined to roll up their suit sleeves and record the theme tune to Miami Vice (Lethal Enforcer).

It isn't all bad. For all it's alcoholic desperation, After Hours is disarmingly sweet and catchy, Impatience rediscovers that ability to pick up a tune and gleefully slap you about the face with it and Altered Beast has both a stomping beat and an eminently appealing Weezer-like fuzzy grind.

But none of it stops you longing after the energy and charm of their debut. From freestyle champions they've gone to unsteady riders. From indie royalty to just part of the proletariat. Unfortunately it seems, WAS just not WAS any more.

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Mercury Prize 2009 nominees