Last month The Lowell asked four writers to pick their favorite albums, pair up, swap, and review.

Michelle Wan, reporter: After listening to and loving The Script’s self-titled 2009 debut album, I eagerly awaited the Irish band’s second record, Science and Faith, and wasn’t disappointed. Filled with insanely catchy melodies and heartfelt lyrics, sung to perfection with passion and soul by lead singer Danny O’Donoghue, The Script’s sophomore album is even better than the first.

MARA'S REVIEW

It would be hard to listen to The Script’s 2010 album, Science & Faith, without drawing comparisons to fellow Irish rockers U2. Three decades after U2 established itself as the standard for Irish pop music, The Script’s frontman Danny O’Donoghue is carrying the classic styles of Bono and the Edge into a newer, more contemporary world of music.

Fans of modern pop-rock bands such as Coldplay or Maroon 5 might be the primary audience for Science & Faith, but the record’s sound stretches beyond clear-cut boundaries. The parallel between The Script and U2 is evident in the soaring grandeur of layered sounds in the first song, “You Won’t Feel A Thing.” Songs such as “This Is Love” and “Walk Away” display elements from current mainstream R&B, hip-hop, and rap. And the reggae-pop style associated with The Police is reflected in tracks such as “Long Gone And Moved On,” which has a bridge suspiciously similar to the verse melody of The Police’s “Ever Little Thing She Does Is Magic”.

Even with such a wide range of influences, the main problem with Science & Faith is its lack of originality. Listening to the album, it is easy to imagine you’ve heard some version of the same song on the radio many times before. And O’Donoghue’s slightly raspy, sometimes-falsetto and purely poppy voice could be interchanged with that of any number of other pop-rock frontmen with little noticeable difference.

However, Science & Faith was a generally enjoyable listen, and most fans of the pop-rock genre should give it a spin. Amidst its catchy melodies, a sort of poetry that has become rare in modern music emerges through its lyrics. The title track “Science & Faith” addresses the conflict between the tangible and the spiritual, concluding that “You can break everything down to chemicals / But you can't explain a love like ours.” A record about the classic themes of love and pain, Science & Faith could easily be headed towards the Billboard charts.