Homeless Hill – Invincible

Review by Paul H Birch

This summer, should the stars so align, Homeless Hill could be America’s breakout band of 2013. They’re already big in Georgia, but getting the right exposure across the length and breadth of the USA is another matter. We’re not talking a Southern rock band here, and despite them listing the same latest-raves that everyone’s PR man thinks will land someone a gig as influences, I don’t really see much of that either. What I hear is rock music pure and simple; that plays it hard, with gusto over a bunch of well-crafted songs.

Listening to Invincible, Homeless Hill’s second independently released CD, there’s enough genuine commercial potential for at least three hit singles here (given the nigh impossibly right radio/video airplay) and another couple of songs that are just waiting to have a few bars played as background music at some emotionally pivotal conclusion to a TV show. See, lyrically these guys are either clever or just plain intuitive. Their songs have this non-specific thing going on where beyond the general vibe of it all being youthful angst you don’t know if they’re singing about breaking up with a girl, not getting on with your parents or the bigger sociological picture of wanting to leave a stereotypically small minded town out in Hicksville, USA. Like I say, picture perfect to have someone catching a greyhound bus come end of season in some tweeb-drama while such aural candy’s playing in the background.

The aching hearted ‘They Don’t Know’ would be my bet for TV theme usage, a slower partly-acoustic number that contrasts with the rockier more personal first-person title track ‘Invincible’ that follows it. The album opens well with ‘Break Away’ as a Stones-style chord riff sequence carouses the verses before a big Who-like hook line chorus has you singing alongside them, a couple more numbers in you’ve got the even better single ‘Broken Bones’ that would shift good royalty business pumping out over an American football team’s PA system as a wounded player was carried off the pitch. This full-on foursome has a crisply rooted butt-kicking rhythm section in drummer Danny Savage and bass guitarist Adam Crump, new lead guitarist Jonathan Foreman applies long sustained notes backed by a slight echo to good effect, while vocalist/guitarist in Darin Curtis roars with harmonic passion from start to finish not least on the unexpected dark existentialism of ‘Die Alone’. They can also take off epically on songs like Oddball’ and pull off a Caribbean carnival back beat that has both humour and drama to it in ‘Pirates’ – If they could also pull a genie out of a bottle washed up on the shore and get it to grant them the success they deserve, we’d all be the better off for it.

Music to dance, rock out, and sing out loud along to – Play Homeless Hill’s Invincible from start to finish… Then play it all over again!

8.5 out of 10

• Homeless Hill Website
• Homeless Hill Facebook Site
• Homeless Hill on Reverbnation

Track listing:

1. Break Away
2. Hold Me Close
3. Broken Bones
4. Oddball
5. They Don’t Know
6. Invincible
7. Die Alone
8. Pirates
9. It’s Just the Wind
10. Wasting Gasoline