If you're into bands like Weezer and Phantom Planet, than I would recommend the new self titled album by the House of Heroes. They too have a very southern Californian style with songs you would hear in the background of an episode of the O.C, or playing out of a car driven by some surfers.
The album is very melodic and easy to listen to with good flow of instrumentals and the singer provides the band with soft melodic vocals, which give it that surfer style. Each song seems like they could easily be related to the lives of young people from anywhere. The words in "Suicide Baby" are about losing a girl and apologizing for screwing up, a theme that most people can relate to, especially teenagers who are going through relationships and experiencing these types of feelings for the fist time.
"Mercedes Baby" is a perfect example of a song which you can easily hear in a southern California atmosphere. You could definitely see people driving to the beach, in a Mercedes, and blasting this song. It is a fun track, with a chorus that will easily get stuck in your head. The instrumentals provide a great sound to dance to if you're in the mood to groove. Though the songs are fun, they begin to get boring as the album progresses due to a lack of originality.
The album is very repetitive and it's hard to differentiate most of the songs from one another. No one could ever accuse House of Heroes of being diverse. It seems they can only play one sound and repeat it over and over again, which doesn't allow the songs to stand out from one another.
If you are into the O.C, or just like bands like Weezer, than I would definitely recommend this album to you. It has a soft rock sound and clear vocals that you can just sit and chill to, or dance around and have a good time too. Overall, the album is not bad, but it could be better if the band would make each song somewhat different rather than making the entire album sound the same. The songs lack originality and diversity and it is easy to mix up the names of songs because so many sound similar. So again if your interested in this type of music than go buy it, if not than go buy something else.
