Fox Food Records need no introduction around these parts. What does need introduction is their latest release, Cool Waves, Young Blood by New York’s Home Lives. The band, usually the duo of Mike Horgan on guitar and Brittany Cohen on keyboard, are joined on this release by Noah Bowman (of Diet Cig) on drums. The band make hook-laden indie rock tunes that apparently try to deal with a variety of topics, including childhood and that post-collegiate mire we’ve addressed quite a lot here at WTD. Their sound is simultaneously intense and unpretentious, lots of guitars meet crashing cymbals and Horgan’s at-times introspective vocals.
The title track is an emo-shaded slice of indie rock with a jangle pop undertow. It proves a good introduction to the nature of the album, melodramatic but not all dark and gloomy, the lyrics like sparks in the night, flashes that often reach a violent intensity:
“In the darkest days I knew that you were mine
you breaking books like I had broken your spine”
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‘Stuck w/ Me’ is more jangle pop, this time treading close to the lovelorn shoegaze of Pains of Being Pure at Heart. The themes here are pretty self evident from the title, the lyrics a profession of love held aloft regardless of how the object of said love feels about it (“Well I’m afraid that I don’t want nobody else / You’re stuck with me”). ‘Young Blood’ opens with chugging guitars (“like a puréed fruit / my time in the blender has changed me / I just need time to regroup / I’ll get it together eventually”) before blooming into bursts of flailing indie rock. Finale ‘Baby Angel’ brings everything together, ostensibly a love song, the ending of which builds and builds into a pounding, crashing finale, a fitting end to a great collection of songs.
“You’re going to have to leave your friends and family behind for good
You’re going to have to forget about everything you never thought you could
Because it’s everyone else or me
You have to prove your loyalty
That’s the way it has to be”
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Get Cool Waves, Young Blood now via the Fox Food Records Bandcamp page, as a pay-what-you-want download or on lovely red cassette tape, which also comes with some extra goodies including a polaroid taken by the band. The band are also signed to Aussie label Monday Records, so check in there for tour updates, etc.
