Home: Seventeen

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Home's latest album, Seventeen, opens with "Hello From Texas," a distorted blast of lo-fi that makes John Darnielle's earliest recordings sound pristine by comparison. It's a bold way to open an album for a band whose following is modest at best...and a good way to lose listeners who may not have the patience to navigate through the various stylistic exercises that comprise the album. If listeners have the attention span to ride it out, though, they'll find plenty to like among the album's 15 tracks, even if Seventeen isn't the band's most consistent release and will likely primarily be of interest only to the band's current fans.

To be sure, the album is far from flawless and may not be fully appreciated by those who aren't familiar with the quartet's brand of indie pop. There's a fair amount of silliness here: middle tracks "Wall Walker," "L-O-V-E" and "Gladdy Glad" all exhibit the sophomoric humor and blatantly simplistic rhyme schemes that occasionally reared their heads on concept album Sexteen, which never could be accused of exactly being subtle anyway. Though these songs become - somewhat - more palatable with repeated listens and certain self-serious indie bands could benefit from Home's example, their goofiness nearly renders them throwaways. "Gladdy Glad" in particular stinks of schmaltz, with a catchy and carnival-like pop arrangement that's weighed down by awkward, sappy lyrics. The song is excessively cute to the point of the listener's annoyance; its attempts at tongue-in-cheek humor fall flat, and it's the type of overly optimistic song that makes its love-struck narrator sound like the most obnoxious and irritating fool in the room.

Seventeen is in many ways a tale of two albums: if the record's lighthearted tracks are mostly forgettable, the band is at its best on the album's more heartfelt and, for lack of a better term, serious tracks. "Pop! Pop!" plays like a passable redux of standard garage rock and album closer "Walking Talking Slab Of Heaven" is a convincing and wonderfully screwed up stab at country music, but a handful of other songs most effectively play to the band's lyrical and instrumental strengths and make the album worth hearing. "Easter Snow" consists of nothing more than a simple acoustic guitar, patches of static interference and understated vocal harmonies that are heavy with a sense of distance and loneliness. It's the album's most conventional and outstanding moment, and - with the images and emotions it invokes - almost unbearably sad. "Any Way That You Go" has a similar tone and style, as the song's unassuming vocals fit the arrangements perfectly. Sometimes less is more, even for a lo-fi band with experimental leanings like Home; both songs exhibit the type of restraint and accessibility that are too frequently missing from much of the album.

Seventeen won't embarrass its creators, but it won't be considered Home's finest moment either. There are several slight and empty songs here that likely should have been omitted for the album's overall benefit, but goddamn, "Easter Snow" is a fantastic track deserving to be heard by a wide audience. One standout track and few other keepers certainly don't make an entire album essential, but these are one more than many other bands cut from a similar cloth as Home ever manage to achieve.

Heavy Hometown: Action Figures

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Action Figures is a disjointed and inconsistent work, its songs going in opposite directions that don't always mesh as a whole. The debut album from Midwestern-based trio Heavy Hometown, it undoubtedly covers a lot of musical terrain, though that terrain is somewhat sludgy and occasionally leaves shit all over your shoes. It's saddled with many of the negative connotations associated with a first album; chiefly, a lack of self-editing and a sense of fumbling in the dark, groping for a unique musical voice. Yet for all these faults, there are several truly memorable songs lurking amid the clumsiness. While a bit of self-editing would have resulted in a remarkable EP, what we're ultimately left with is a hit-and-miss first statement from a - cliché alert - promising young band.

The most immediate shortcoming to Action Figures is an inconsistency of style that too often suggests a band picking and choosing from a grab bag of previous eras and genres. Such homage is always a dicey proposition - rare is the album that follows this approach and doesn't sound like a slavish and watered-down pastiche of its forbears - and it kills more than a few tracks here. This most frequently occurs on the more abrasive tracks, which tend to sound like by-rote pastiches of shoegaze, drone and lo fi. Regardless of whether it's by coincidence or intention, "Strange Wave" and "Medicine," with their wall of fuzz and slightly buried and distorted vocals, sound like vintage Jesus and Mary Chain, while "My Ghost (Is The Most)" is reminiscent of a garage band who just got their hands on Nuggets for the first time. Of course it's a crap shoot when a critic tries to pin-point a band's influences, but the similarities here are pretty severe, with these songs sounding like a patchwork of various genres and artists.

Yet other tracks are downright stellar. The album roughly splits lead vocal duties between John Wood and Corey Barnes, and the two vocalists' contrasting styles - Wood's voice is fragile and cracked, while Barnes' is far smoother and deeper - make for some nice moments. Woods' weariness on opener "We Ate The Bug" suggests a vulnerability and detachment worthy of Jason Pierce, the song's sparse electric guitar-based arrangement setting a somber tone. "Haircut Chair" is likewise excellent, with Woods' wavering and shaky voice and his assertion that "{all of our dreams are on the ropes}" especially poignant. By contrast Barnes' singing leans toward something more traditional and straightforward. The country-sway of "Black Bikini" showcases his skills nicely, sounding a little bit like a cross between Jeff Tweedy and Curt Kirkwood. Barnes' voice likewise adds emotion and textures to these songs; "your eyes reflect on everything I do" he sings in a near-baritone on "No Bodies," a line that could be interpreted in any number of ways. The band is at its best when it forgoes drone and distortion in favor of these more subdued and introspective moments, where the instruments can breathe and each vocalist can bend and stretch the lyrics.

As debuts go, Action Figures is promising. Its strongest songs suggest a measured understanding of life's joys and disappointments, its imperfections and perfections - "I still love you Sara Ann/ For the good times and the bad" - and mostly offset the color-by-numbers approach that sounds too familiar and generic for its own good. There's an understated sense of both hope and sadness throughout the album, though sometimes the listener has to sort through some clutter to find such moments.