Hospitality: Hospitality - Album Review

Hospitality
Hospitality
Rating: Grrrr

As I push further into my 40s, I begin to look back at certain times of my life with fondness, sadness, and sometimes outright embarrassment. My 20s, just out of college, and far wetter behind my ears than I would like to admit, were awkward, exploratory, and full of so many mistakes I have lost count. Would I go back and change any of it? I think we all would like to alter certain things, but honestly, based on who I am today and where I am, I am ok with how things turned out. I certainly wouldn't want to go back and be 20 again, shudder. I am much more centered and at peace with myself now, that to go back would be almost too painful. Which makes me feel very paternal towards the debut album from Brooklyn three piece band Hospitality, which chronicles the day in day out goings on of twenty-somethings in New York, and all their yearnings, fumblings, and musings. You want to wrap these characters up in a blanket, serve them hot cocoa and tell them it will all be ok. The band itself, fronted by singer/guitarist Amber Papini, borrows liberally from a wide range of different bands, Belle & Sebastian, Camera Obscura, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, and The Clientele for example, but what they lack for in originality they make up for it with superb song craft. Tight arrangements and interesting background flourishes mesh well with Papini's fragile voice and her insightful, wry lyrics.

"Friends of Friends" the girl wants to stay in alone and warm from the cold streets of New York, whose crowds and bustle only remind her that the guy she's seeing has a girlfriend coming back in town. The jaunty horns and sprightly beat hide the pain that is just beneath the surface.



"Liberal Arts" could be culled directly from the Stuart Murdoch songbook. The character ruminating about all "the trouble of a B.A. in English literature /instead of law or something more practical" and feeling aimless and adrift without benefit of a "trust fund, daddy, or doctor."



There is a wistfulness to the songs here, the characters thinking they know what they want, but changing their minds minute to minute, always in a hurry to get their life started. The dream pop of "Sleepover" perfectly suits the stars in her eyes narrator, who moves from lover, to pretend marriage, to imploring the mate to "Lock the door before you leave."



"Argonauts," one of the loveliest tracks on the record, feels like a quest to get out of a bad situation, "lock the key and throw the door away/something told me that I should leave right away/don't forget the bad, don't forget the bad."



"Eight Avenue" struts and bobs its head to a peppy beat and interlocking guitars, the song has the characters, older, but seldom wiser, looking back as I have on their 20s, but with a sweetness and fondness for their naivety.



None of these descriptions is meant to imply that the album is dour or far too serious. There are plenty of pure pop tracks. From the too brief guitar stomper "The Right Profession," the horn propelled "All Day Today," and the jangly ode to a former co-worker "Betty Wang" with the gloriously goofy way she sings "if you leave New York/I don't care/ I don't care."



But while the majority of songs on Hospitality keep a limited world and personal point of view, there are hints that the band should not be too easily pigeonholed. Papini shows a deep sense of mood and imagery in her lyrics. In "Julie," the haunting accordion, ukulele, and strummed guitars, builds slowly under Papini's whispered vocals, adding a ghostly wash of ambient synths, subtly underscores the impressionistic tale.



Hospitality is an auspicious debut for this band, showing that they already have the chops and hooks to make more than an indelible impression on listeners. There is plenty of room for their sound and vision to grow, along with what should soon be a sizable fan base.

Rating Scale:

Chilfos: masterpiece; coolest thing I've heard in ages.

Woof Daddy: excellent; just a hair away from being a masterpiece.

Grrrr: very good; will definitely be considered for my top releases of the year.

Yeah Daddy Make Me Want It: good; definitely invites further listens and peaks one's interest for more material.

Meh: not horrible, but certainly not great; could have either been polished, trimmed, or re-thought.

Jeez Lady: what the hell happened? Just plain bad. They should hang their heads in shame and be forced to listen to Lady Gaga ad nauseam as penance.

Tragicistani: so bad, armed villagers with pitchforks and torches should run the artist out of the country for inflicting this abomination on the human race.