House With No Home

It leaves a lot implied, but slowly clears the way for a chilling catharsis.

It is really a much more modern album than the Americana tag would at first suggest, and the songs are as instantaneous and memorable as the best pop music.

If you like gorgeous folk, then this album is for you. If you don’t, well, The Hold Steady released something not that long ago.

Singer Justin Ringle often muffles his words or loses them altogether (as though a wool scarf were covering his mouth) as he trudges through cadences reminiscent of Ryan Adams or Iron & Wine's Sam Beam, delicately dotting his stanzas with multi-dimensional characters weathering the winters of their existence. Which is more enriching than it sounds.

House With No Home is the ideal second album for a band like this: a refinement and broadening and deepening, even of their sound, one that suggests a rich and hopefully lasting career.

They are not evidence of a group wallowing in their own experimental pretentiousness. They are the finishing touches on an already admirable piece of work.

They cast a powerful spell and sustain it over 11 tracks, yet at times you wish they'd jam, or perform a cover, or do anything to break it up somehow.

the two carve up each track like master craftsman, finding the perfect middle ground between the sparse, reverb-laden landscapes of the Great Lake Swimmers and the orchestral, aching beauty of Hem.