A five-piece band from Austin Texas Tahoma tread a melodic soft-rock path. While they mention the classic 70’s sounds of Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell and the Eagles in their brief bio as influences much of this album seems to be more akin to the current slew of young male chart toppers. Now this may be doing Brandon Aguilar, singer and chief writer for the band a disservice and indeed the album is spikier than the likes of Ed Sheeran but despite the band tag here Aguilar is front and centre throughout and there is a tendency to slip into a soft soul bag on several of the songs.
The band (Sarah Oermann on backing vocals/percussion, Vinnie Fallico on lead guitar, Mark Mayfield on bass, and Clellan Hyatt on drums) service Aguilar well with a shiny production ensuring there are no rough edges. Unfortunately, this slick approach fails to engage this listener despite the initial hopes raised by the opening song Messenger which actually has a mild Neil Young country crunch to it, the guitars sounding slightly snarly here. Thereafter however they steer firmly down the middle of the road avoiding all ditches and even brief glimpses of Allmans’ like guitar duelling fail to lift the enterprise.
Summary
The sound of a band still trying to find their direction
