This Canadian outfit of brothers Mars and Michael Ivic concoct sweet ‘60s era pop on the cheerful Brit-tinged “Hearts for the Living”. The song fills up the room despite the fact it’s basically a two-man outfit which makes the tandem sound like Pilot Speed (Pilate for Canadian readers) and a punchier Travis. They also revisit this same domain during “Don’t Waste Time” that has traces of Coldplay’s anthem-like rock. At the same time, nuggets such as “Wrong” can’t possibly go wrong when using someone like The Kinks or Ray Davies as your muse as it appears to be the case here. The Morning Stars aren’t afraid of creating dramatic and sometimes majestic anthems like the title track that would give The Verve or Richard Ashcroft a run for their money. Another plus here is how they rather limit their output to nine strong songs rather than an album with nine goodies and three fillers. The album’s dark horse is the sweet, infectious and quirky “Waiting at Your Door”, but a close second is the Manchester-era sounding “All Coming Down” that resembles the Stone Roses. The Morning Stars fade out with a sweet, harmony-laced “Fall”. Hopefully band will rise and shine with an album as fabulous as this one.

• Multiple songs MySpace
• Multiple songs MP3 - via Obscure Sound