Home - So Much Love

(Cooking Vinyl, 2000)

As was hinted on their earlier, messier releases, Home always had it in ’em to make a lush, complex, song-based record, but I reckon that on those screwy albs of days-gone-by there musta been the constant twin frustrations of CASH and EQUIPMENT (rather than SKILL and AMBITION) holding the band back from achieving true mega-pop grandeur. Once the group finally managed to hook up with Lips/Rev biggie Dave Fridmann, though, poop hit the fan in the most glorious of ways. The expansive Home XIV, front to back, demonstrates this quite ably, with single “So Much Love” (released as a 7” limited to 250 copies) providing the purest radio-pop thrills. It’s a bouncy, optimistic number that wins thanks to sunny harmonies, some dollops of “What Goes On”-style organ and those close-mic’d drums that are Fridmann’s production trademark. Fragmentary weirdness is not totally gone, however, as the B-side is another variation on the “Children’s Suite” piece that the band had already worked into three full-lengths. This chop-’em-up instrumental puts an ominous, horror-movie-esque spin on XIV’s “Children’s Suite 3: Displaying Prisms,” then segues into a robotic, electronics-driven section similar to XI’s “Children’s Suite 2: Health,” before concluding with a cinematic crescendo. Whew!

Home - (You Can Make It) Underground

(Screw Music Forever, 199x)

I’m back from vacation, rested but sporting a painful sunburn due to the bathing beauties with whom I travel having missed a spot during the application of lotion. Crispy right shoulder blade aside, you’ll be pleased to know that the beach, where I ignored music and focused on consuming much purple prose, was a swell time, and now I’m ready to start thinking about records again, starting with – chuckle chuckle – Home. These Floridians-turned-Brooklynites have been on a succession of impressive labels – Relativity, Emperor Jones, Jet Set, Arena Rock, Brah – while somehow managing to stay pretty far under the radar for most of their career. Not sure whether that’s due to the band’s innate quirkiness (sonic/stylistic restlessness, low profile on the concert scene, concept album about sex), or good ol’ fashioned bum luck, but theirs is an extensive and interesting catalog that merits a looky-listen from all askew-pop fans currently drawing both breath and a salary. This early single, likely released in the mid-’90s, is four tracks of extremely enjoyable primitive pop experimentation that succeeds on its own merits, sounding as it does like the late-’90s Flaming Lips recorded on zero budget, or young Pavement without the detached wryness, while also hinting at the lush greatness yet to come on Home XIV. I’ll admit that I find the ultra-lo-fi recording rather self-conscious and gimmicky, even if it was in fact borne of poverty/necessity, but the songs themselves are so good, there being ideas a-plenty here and an obvious knack for melody and laziness-avoidance – a shitkicking Olivia Tremor Control? – that it’s easy to forget ’n’ forgive whatever perceived sonic transgressions. No gyp wax, this; a fine item to take up space on any shelf.