All The Plans, British band Starsailor’s third album, features a shot of a small boy kitted out in a school uniform, with a roomy cable knit sweater thrown on top, and fierce, adult-sized aviator sunglasses. He’s staring at the camera, expressionless, as a large moon mirror hangs behind him. Reflecting back on reflections, if you will.

It’s an apt metaphor for Starsailor, whose biggest hits –_2001’s “Good Souls” and 2002’s “Silence is Easy” –cemented the band’s reputation for solid rock-pop sounds. Essentially young men when they started out, the band is hugely popular in their native England, with ten of their songs hitting the UK Top 40 chart. With their fourth album, All The Plans, they bring more of the same singalong rock tunes, along with a touch of nostalgia and reverence. It all makes for nice, if not entirely memorable, listening –something producer Steve Osborne, who produced their first album, surely couldn’t have been aiming for. They’ve been quoted as saying they wanted to release a “classic” album, with little experimentation and differentiation in sound. What they’ve sacrificed, however, is sonic maturity. Considering the strength of their songwriting abilities, that’s disappointing.

Named after the 1970 album by Tim Buckley, Starsailor enjoyed a meteoric rise to success following their 2000 Glastonbury Festival appearance. Their second album, Silence Is Easy, was initially produced by legendary producer (and now convicted felon) Phil Spector, and later finished by Blur regular John Leckie. As well as solo tours, the band has also opened for James Blunt, The Killers, and The Rolling Stones. Yet despite the rock pedigrees, Starsailor were, and remain, the polite, dreamy cousin of bad boys Oasis. Their third album finds the same tuneful pop-rock licks as the Bros. Gallagher, but without the harder edge of sound and loud, fist-pumping anthems. The first track off All The Plans, “Tell Me It’s Not Over,” is a pleading love ballad, with Walsh’s voice ringing out in its recognizable alarm-meets-drone style. The repeated piano line and strumming guitars leading to a crashing chorus is catchy and vaguely anthemic, but is, at its heart, a love song. Like the album’s title track, it has all the hallmarks of wanting to be, to use a British term, a dead cert number one. “Boy in Waiting” is a good enough tune, full of melodic catchiness and earthy, granola-esque guitars; its title reminds one of the cover image, particularly as Walsh sings of the fleeting nature of fame –“the heights climb from time to time” –and his band’s persistent desire to “be your lover, Hollywood.”

But what separates Starsailor from the innumerable other bands, British or otherwise, desiring after the same thing? There’s something too starkly contrasting between the band’s boyish earnestness and their lofty ambitions. There’s an even bigger divide between bands singing about wanting to be famous versus those who already act as if they are. “Neon Sky” is a solid track that finds Walsh turning over ideas of identity and ambition (again) and sounding more than a little like Richard Ashcroft, but unlike The Verve frontman, neither he nor his bandmates (keyboardist Barry Westhead, bassist James Stelfox, and drummer Ben Byrne) seem to have progressed in songwriting maturity since their inception nearly ten years ago.

And therein lies the problem. All The Plans doesn’t feel like an expansion on Starsailor’s earliest efforts. It’s frustrating, particularly since they’ve shown, more than once, that they are capable of excellence. What’s missing is the risk that would make them artistically interesting. While the album starts out strongly, with a string of ‘dead cert’ wannabe- pop-rock-hybrid hits, a depressing malaise of homogeneity sets in midway through, and by “Listen Up”, the penultimate track, Walsh’s soft call of “Listen up, we’re going to change the world” feels strangely disingenuous. This insertion of social consciousness isn’t just weirdly placed, but it’s sitting in a song that’s melodically dull, not for a minute matching the energy behind the intention.

It’s just possible Starsailor left their most interesting track for the end of All The Plans. The quiet “Safe At Home,” is beautifully sung, and simply performed. No bombast or audible predetermination to sound the way most might expect Starsailor should. And that’s a good thing. A simple guitar begins the track, followed by the addition of a basic drum line and keyboard/bass accompaniment. “There’s a cloud hanging over my head / I can’t block it out / so I’m going to bed.” It’s a deceivingly complex song, simply rendered, and yes, perhaps a bit risky. Shame the album couldn’t have been the same.  Little boys grow up, and aviator shades are best-worn by those unafraid to fly.