Max Recordings
2006
Let / Me / Wear / Your / Coat
About This Album
It takes a certain type of fortitude to name a band Ho-Hum -- you really shouldn't leave yourself wide open like that -- but these Little Rock pop/rockers have managed to release ten albums in over a dozen years as a working unit while never quite managing to break out of the insular power pop underground. In part, this is because the style of music that co-leader Lenny Bryan (guitar and vocals) and Rod Bryan (bass and vocals) specialize in hasn't been commercially fashionable for at least a decade: Ho-Hum are a straightforward guitar pop band with debts to the Gin Blossoms, Marshall Crenshaw, and an entire generation of post-R.E.M. Southern college rockers. Much of Let Me Wear Your Coat would have fit comfortably on Hootie & the Blowfish's Cracked Rear View, which is both a compliment and a criticism. The Bryans have a knack for sweet and jangly pop tunes full of arpeggiated riffs, winsome vocals, and mildly lovelorn lyrics; taken on their own merits just about any of these 11 songs would have fit nicely onto a mixtape circa 1995, in between Deep Blue Something's "Breakfast at Tiffany's" andthe Rembrandts' "I'll Be There for You." The title track and the spiraling closer, "Into the Sun," are particularly effective. Taken as a whole, however, the unerring politeness of these gently pop/rocking tunes, the pleasant but anonymous vocals, and the overall sense that these guys should have been opening for Wilco on the Being There tour make Let Me Wear Your Coat a fairly enjoyable but ultimately unsatisfying exercise in déjà entendu. ~ Stewart Mason, All Music Guide
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4 and 5)

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