They Walk Among Us -wt Mathematics, Art in Progress -wl Monokos / Aeronaut -wf Welsh Brit-pop band They Walk Among Us glide smoothly around in the lush and sweet terrain occupied by bands like Stereophonics and latter-day Manic Street Preachers. With a strict focus on melody and harmony, even the few attempts to rock out on here sound like über-pleasant Sunday strolls in the park. And, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. -wm Main man Richard Proctor has done this stuff in various guises over the last few years, most notably with Quicksand Charlie, who recorded several EPs and embarked on a couple of US and UK tours before they somehow transformed into They Walk Among Us, shifting their focus towards more well-produced and well-crafted pop music in the process. Songs like the upbeat “You and Me” and “Come Around” prove that the band knows how to turn out good, solid tunes, and the pseudo-epic ballad “Sitting Duck” demonstrates the flooding, brash aspects of the band. -wm But it’s hard to maintain interest in a band so hung up on other people’s ideas, especially when those ideas weren’t all that exciting in the first place. For fans of every sub-Brit-pop band that came along during the mid-‘90s, this is a pretty safe bet. The rest of us may want to give this a spin before actually shelling out hard-earned cash for it. -wd They Walk Among Us: http://www.they-walk-among-us.com/ -wb Stein Haukland