aaamusic | On 17, Jun 2012

On first listen, Family Of The Year’s ‘Loma Vista’ steals you away with is lush, occasionally inspired sound that mixes acoustic summertime pop with pretty much anything the band seem to think of. And while this hits gold every now and again, I’d be hard pressed to say that with repeated listens and some closer attention, this is anything more than a guilty pleasure.

Given the teeth-grindingly silly chorus of ‘St Croix’, you’d be forgiven for thinking this is nothing but a lazy summer release. But listen to the music in itself and you enter a blissful oasis of acoustic charm. The percussion has a Latin chill factor in instrumentation and style and the guitar melody takes a vaguely “oriental” feel that adds a breathy scope to the music, lifting it from the doldrums of bland pop. On the penultimate track ‘Never Enough’, there’s even a delicious psychedelic slide guitar moment that redeems a mildly by-numbers song. And funnily enough, the opposite happens on ‘Buried’, where we’re faced with a luscious, countrified jaunty acoustic guitars singalong but for all the jauntiness there is the obvious underlying fatalism.
The opening track in itself, ‘The Stairs’ is an odd beast in its own right. Although we seem to be facing a cool acoustic pop song, there’s a wry sense of humour behind its shining-eyed loveliness and a charming foul mouth in the chorus that actually wins over with its stilted awkwardness. The music is an accomplished composition, however, and incredibly well-produced, lifting everything from guitars to group vocals to flutes in a quietly euphoric cloud. The decidedly more electro ‘Diversity’ features toe-curling synths and trite lyrics, and narrowly escapes a dreaded second-song turnoff. There’s another very, very narrow miss with synths of ‘Living On Love’, where the widdly-widdly synth line jars so badly with everything else it almost overwhelms the rest of the song entirely, but it is saved with the help of the electro-acoustic clash.
There are some genuinely great songs on here. ‘Hero’ is a lush and beautiful, tender number. The words and music are so heartbreakingly spot-on, you wonder how they managed to create this and ‘Diversity’. Following track ‘Everytime’ carries this through as a dreamy little post-love song. Too sweet to be breakup, too fragile to be loss, this is a touching acoustic tale of yearning that is like a slicker version of Ash’s ‘Girl From Mars’. Not better, mind, just with bigger production that distracts from the fact you’ve heard it before. ‘In The End’ does this better, with its odd little male/female duet and gentle instrumentation that recalls the honeyed tones, not to mention sentiment, of girl-group pop. ‘Hey Ma’ attempts a piano version and electric guitar of what ‘Hero’ did, and between the tender piano start and the big old power ballad end pretty much manages it, although the end stunts the emotional sincerity a bit. But by ‘Find It’, the formula of intense yet twee lovey-dovey moments in words and music irks more than it allures, and any repeated listens make the listener feel a bit cynical.

It’s hard to hate ‘Loma Vista’. It has a warm heart and even a soul beneath the oddities and veneer of big production, and there are some great moments in it. But to really enjoy it more than once as anything other than background music becomes arduous, even challenging. There are a few good songs here, but too many patches and holes to prove itself as good as first appearances suggest.

★★★★★

Katie H-Halinski