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Alternative PressHome Acres is rooted in stunning energy that tells the tale of a Midwestern dream falling apart. [Apr 2010, p.122]
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It's musically complex and ambitious, but flashes of powerpop shine through, making this Aloha's hookiest effort to date. Its pop aspect is more nocturnal than sunny, though, with its colors showing subtly vivid in the twilight.
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While Home Acres reverts every now and then to formless mush, the album ends beautifully with the pounding, organ-washed “Ruins,” which summarizes the record’s whole approach: rising from a murmur to call to the heavens.
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The vocal parts are slathered in a hazy, echoing ambience and aren’t smoothly integrated with the songs. That being said, it’s not reason enough to dismiss the album, as there is enough substantive music to overcome this imperfection.
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Aloha have created an album with a strange feel, Home Acres is dark but it’s not cold. It’s a humid album that aptly demonstrates Aloha’s greatest strengths, but also highlights their weaknesses.
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Home Acres never breaks any new barriers and it's less cerebral than earlier outings, but it’s a good, consistent listen that showcases the band in their comfort zone.
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Home Acres, on the other hand, is immediately likeable, suitably complex, and not really very adventurous at all. Instead of reinvention, it commits to recombining old elements in a thoughtful, thematically precise way.
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Pretty much every song on this prog-pop band's sixth disc evokes moodiness via some sort of weather, event, or technological-flux metaphor. It's a suitable theme for elegantly mutable yet hummably compact songs, led by marimba as often as guitar.
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The key to enjoying an Aloha record is to hone in on the sounds and textures as much as the stories. With that in mind, Acres provides plenty of subtle rewards.
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While stripping back the instrumentation, so went some of the ambitious structures and much of the angularity that draws the ear into their gorgeous textures.
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Under The RadarIt's one of those albums that would have fared better as an EP. [Winter 2010, p.72]