Search - Ho-Hum :: Now I Love You

Their Best Until Their Next

Andy S. | Los Angeles, CA | 02/22/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"After the artistic highs of largely unheard masterpieces like "Massacre," "Landau Zeal" and "Near and Dear," you might think Arkansas band Ho-Hum would have earned themselves a respite or at least an excuse to put out some substandard product. But, of course, that simply wouldn't be Ho-Hum, who at present can boast the most admirable work ethic in modern rock and perhaps its highest batting average. Few bands aside from the likes of the Beatles or, more recently, Talk Talk have demonstrated themselves so willing to chart their own artistic course with such little regard for the accompanying commercial peril, and Ho-Hum has forged a body of work every bit the equal of those more widely renowned bands of legend.



The band's latest, "Now I Love You," continues the trends established on previous efforts -- whimsical Southern rock fused with electro-pop flourishes, and the occasional unabashed anthem carried across by the soaring vocals of songwriter Lenny Bryan -- only to find these elements coalescing into what is likely Ho-Hum's zenith. The band's pet themes of domesticity and the paradoxical conditionality of unconditional love are given their most mature treatment yet, with the songwriting stronger than on any of Ho-Hum's albums since the landmark artistic leap of 1999's "Massacre." Musically, the band remains a powerhouse, ready to explode at random and ever fearless at doing so, but content often to rely on minimal keyboard textures -- the better to play against one of the hardest-grooving rhythm sections in rock.



How Ho-Hum continues to remain a nonentity on today's music scene remains an issue both vexing and perplexing to this reviewer and to probably not a few among the group's ever-growing legion of vocal fans. It seems, however, that it should be only a matter of time before a wider audience discovers the group and its many virtues, although the prospect of Ho-Hum becoming a large-scale cult phenomenon 20 years down the line a la fellow Southerners Big Star has a certain kind of poetic justice to it. Great music, after all, stands the test of time, and an album like "Now I Love You" seems destined for a kind of immortality. At least until the next Ho-Hum album comes along."