There are no easy answers on Household’s new album, Everything A River Should Be. The band packs the force of a punch into music that might deceptively seem like something more like a finger tap at first. In reality, they’ve truly encapsulated the “everything” component to their album title. The level on which they accomplish this is more dynamic than just that of the rote specifications of the music that they’re playing. Instead, they offer a generous work to the collection of works that tread the line between the emotional force of “emo” and the physical force of hardcore.
Their take on the style is on the softer end of the spectrum, but it’s hardly toothless. The album takes you and spins you around if you’re not careful; it’s simultaneously romantic and contemplative while serving as one of those albums that opens your mind’s eye and makes you stop and think.
The very first song on the record, which has forceful and meaningful music alongside generally sung vocals, contains the repeated line, “Holding on is the hardest part.” The line, even though it’s situated in a song of course, is left to hang there and be thought of after listening to the track. Why does it have to be this way? Why does holding on have to be the “hardest part”? How hard is it to move on from struggling to “hold on”?
Again, just like in life, there are no easy answers on Everything A River Should Be.
The new album from Household feels like an album that is beautifully and firmly grounded in the human existence. That is where it draws its strength – from its personality.
The unanswered and perhaps unanswerable questions continue through the album, like on the track called “Far From Me.” By the time the track “Safe World,” rolls around, vocalist Joshua Gilbert gets even more explicit, singing, “They never tell you of why.” The album is a snapshot of time and of the human existence. Some things never change, but they can be captured and studied, and that’s what happens on Household’s newest album, Everything A River Should Be. The album is a stellar combination of heavy but not-too-heavy musical influences within a dynamic, original work.
