Review Summary: It's called "Speeding 72" because that's as fast as a beat-up red station wagon will go before it spontaneously combusts.
On
Household Name, Momma commit the unpardonable sin of taking a promising idea and beating it into the ground for 12 consecutive songs. Opener “Rip Off” slinks into the listener’s eardrums and oozes with potential, boasting arresting chord changes, hazy guitar leads, and gorgeous vocals floating atop it all. It’s a shame to reveal to my readers that the following eleven tracks are pretty much a rip off of “Rip Off”, but this is the ugly truth. This isn’t as harsh of a reality as it sounds, as “Rip Off” is a pretty damn good song, and most other tracks on
Household Name match its quality, but unfortunately do very little to differentiate themselves from its sonic identity. This isn’t to say that sonic cohesion will always result in monotonous homogeneity, because
Household Name’s cohesion actually suffers as a result of this phenomenon. With the exception of the highly energetic bangers of the tracklist (“Speeding 72”, and especially ‘90s coming-of-age movie theme “Lucky”), most songs here enter through one ear and exit through the other without making a strong impression. While the three aforementioned album highlights are all impactful and make checking out
Household Name a worthwhile endeavor, their high quality is almost counterbalanced by the tedious slog of the slower tracks here, namely closer “No Bite” and “Tall Home”, whose monotone vocal takes and uninspired riffs threaten to leave the album’s momentum dead in the water. Thankfully, these lows remain outweighed by the highs on display here, but it will be up to you to determine an opinion on the album as a whole because I’ve listened to it a handful of times and I still have trouble telling some of the songs apart. Momma likely won't become a household name as a result of
Household Name's release, but that's fine, because your momma already thinks I'm the man of the house.
GOTTEM.
