Household
Traveling to Nepal
Household is an entirely appropriate name for a band that recorded this three track promo in their own home, right down to the handmade CD enclosure. The good news about for this demo is that the DIY process hardly manifests itself at all in the lo-fi rock tracks, which capture the raw grit that seems to elude some big budget studios.
Urgent, wiry and with a foot in both punk and retro rock camps, ‘Traveling to Nepal’ ( their spelling, not mine) is a very fine starter. The guitars and drums lay down the majority of the groundwork with the vocals trailing a little behind the overall quality. The build up at the end is actually just a prelude to a bit of a fizzle-out, which on the one hand is a surprise and on the other, a bit of a disappointment.
‘New Document’ has more going on in the melody department with some quirky guitars that sound like someone hotwiring a bath-tub. The drums are excellent once more and the bass comes up to the watermark, controlling the song with a pounding rhythm.
Final track ‘No Movement’ is a talented combination of the pace of the opener and the melody of the second track. The keyboards are more prevalent in this song and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not. Perhaps they added more to ‘New Document’ with their subtle ice-cream van notes than they do by elbowing into the mix with their ‘dust in the brakes’ sound here.
The best element of Household is their songs, with lots of ideas in terms of mixing up the structures and an acute awareness of how to switch between the quiet breaks and fuzzy chorus. This is all rather promising for a band that’s only four months old, giving them plenty of time yet to work on the niggles.
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