Review: Dom, Family of Love
Dom’s website does a far more adequate job than I could ever dream of doing summing up the band in one sentence: “Dom filters a DIY aesthetic through the upbeat, sunny rhythms of pop music.” With Family of Love the five-piece succeeds in bringing back the buoyancy of their previous EP, Sun Bronzed Greek Gods.
Their second effort has a much more polished feel, but in all honesty, it is more of the same. It fails to experiment or adventure beyond their established milieu of guitar and synth-based pop tunes. There are definitely some stand outs in the latest LP–some of my favorites include “Damn” and “Telephone”. The carefreeness of the lyricism lends itself to some fantastic summer listening, but ultimately, the record fails to rise above or even match their first effort.
Summer listening is never about reaching the horizon of musical creativity; this is why bands like Radiohead usually tend to go for fall/winter releases. However, with such short time between records, I feel that Dom could have attempted something more ambitious to throw into the shrinking arena of rock-based music. It would be the best use of your money to first dive into their first EP before listening to what amounts to more of the same in the second (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing at all…).
– Rajiv Rao
