genres: pop-punk + indie pop
The Home Team have delivered one of the more surprising albums of 2021 with Slow Bloom, which could very easily end up as the year’s best pop-punk album. Coming off 2018’s Better Off, the group seemed to have created an intriguing niche for themselves through pop-punk with an aggressive post-hardcore edge that rejected easycore chugging for more technical guitar work and occasional orchestral flairs. It was a laudably ambitious sound that was executed well enough for a debut, but unfortunately not ending up with that much staying power. Although certainly not carbon copies, groups like Driveways and Belmont provided an alternative path for pop-punk fans looking for more adventurous takes on the genre, with slightly fewer rough edges than The Home Team. Compared to recent releases from those groups, Better Off just didn’t seem that special, and so I mostly wrote the group off. That was a huge mistake.
Early singles “Right Through Me” and “Move It or Lose It” were very very fun, and offered clear indications of growth for the band. On the production side, everything sounds so much more polished and filled out. There’s a weight to the guitar tones that never really shined before, and the vocals sound truly phenomenal (fairly similar to Andres). Gone is any hint of an emo whine, while still showing an unusually rich range and depth for the genre. But it was still just a couple songs, and I expected the rest of the album to return to a more standard sound. Absolutely not. If anything, these two singles are the least adventurous tracks on the album. The band fully commits to a deeply danceable sound that fuses early 2000s power pop with the unusual melodies of modern indie rock/pop, but still structured around a central pop punk idea. “Eat You Up” is almost a modern techno song, somehow subbing guitars for the most prominent electronic beats. There’s clearly some inspiration from djent pop’s exploration of just how much the range of a guitar can be stretched to approximate other instruments, but it’s deployed in an immediately accessible way here.
Most impressive, is how the band has dialed in a sound that seems simultaneously primed for mainstream embrace and unique enough for even the most seasoned listeners. “Scary Movies” is sonically a mainstream pop song, and also one of the most compositionally rich pop-punk songs in years. For past fans of the band, there’s likely to be some concern around the dialing back of the post-hardcore sound. The Home Team definitely is consistently making a choice to abandon many of the more vocally heavy moments (although album closer “Danger” brings the heat with features from Jeff Loomis and Veil Of Maya as probably the band’s heaviest track; it is a one-off), but even fans of their edgier material are likely to find quite a bit to like about this album. There’s even still a fairly involved experimental edge, with frequent (though brief) saxophone bits.
If there is a single critique of the album, the band really doesn’t deviate from their (new) primary sound outside “Danger” or the softer ballad “Another Night Alone With You”. I don’t find this to be a problem at all, given how fresh and good that sound is, and at just over 33 minutes, there’s no time for it to drag, but for some listeners it may be worth noting. Overall, this is one of the most fun surprises of the year. Even in a week that gave us a new Don Broco album, I’ve had a hard time turning this one off. It’s just so easy to listen to, and presents a fresh take on a stale genre for the second time in the band’s two album career. The Home Team, I’ll never doubt you again, and I would not be at all surprised if my enthusiasm for this release continues all the way into my top ten albums at the end of the year. No matter what type of music you’re drawn to, give this a spin, and you will probably have a very good time.
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