IT'S possible that the term "Americana" might need to be redefined in a few years, given the current state of affairs and those likely to follow it. For now, at least, it continues to evoke doomed relationships in backwoods mountain towns and faint optimism blended with crushing reality.

And the second album from Texan outfit Horse Thief – which, incidentally, even includes a track called Mountain Town  – is true to template. Perhaps a bit too true because Trials & Truths barely contains a bad song but it doesn’t really contain any standouts either.

Adopting a more straightforward, radio-friendly, classic-rock approach, in place of the experimental, trying-to-find-our-sound sound of their 2014 debut Fear In Bliss, is fine on the mid-album peak of Empire, Falling For You and Evil’s Rising: sweeping, sorrowful, and jauntily synth-hinged respectively.

Elsewhere, it restrains a band whose music, if it’s going to be this predictable, needs to be more powerful. Trials & Truths is an album of drift rather than depth: neat, consistent, earnest, and well-intentioned, but too straight-lined and lacking in personality to give it an edge in a musical field that already has plenty of more ambitious occupants.