Albums
Head Home
2007
Genre: Rock
Release Date: 2007
By William Bowers
Reviewed November 3, 2006
Walking the line between darkly evocative Americana and Southern Gothic cliché, New York band's commitment and cathartic energy eventually win out.
Finally, someone has found a unique angle for the execution of tired "Southern" tropes: be from New York! What a genius plan this sextet has concocted, to bring their hoedown-core to the nation's music-blog-and-press-hub so that typists and hypists don't have to (sigh) seek them out in the cultural landfill that is (yawn) non-New-York America, and then the band can bask in the boring language of this genre's typical, lazy, ghetto-izing reception: "haunted," "Appalachian," "swamp," "mountain," etc. City slickers might be surprised by how unswampy most mountains are, and vice versa. Anyway, bits of the o'death boys' affected vocals and influence-recycling barely escape being lampoonable as striving to embody Clap Y'alls Hands Say Yeehaw.