The Albany

Visited with a few friends for an evening, short notice, Christmas "Do".... we did NOT book rooms/stay overnight. OK so reasonably good choice of beers, I love Moretti so that was a winner! Service from bar staff polite and friendly, food was absolutely acceptable. Burgers were £10/12 range and were £10/12 burgers, the sweet potato fries were VERY nice.... BUT Considering it was a Friday night the pub was VERY quiet, right from the start of the evening we found ourselves asking for the LOUD music to be turned down. Each time it crept up again. Now I totally understand the music thing in pubs, there ARE loud music pubs which are very popular and usually crowded, and if you are providing loud music FOR those customers then that's fine. However a lot of people, myself included, like to be able to have conversations WITH the people I'm out with, so I'd usually avoid loud pubs when socialising/dining. The opinion I got was the music wasn't to entertain throngs of youngsters, it was to entertain the 5 or 6 friends of the pub staff present? Most of the other customers were couples/groups talking. Maybe the pub IS usually rammed with youngsters and I've got it all wrong, we just hit it on a bad night, but with the location you're in, my bet is that if you aimed your service at the older customer and perhaps turned the music RIGHT down and put something other than Oasis* on, you might find Friday nights a bit busier? *I love Oasis, but not right in my ear when I'm eating a meal with friends trying to chat!