You'd Prefer an Astronaut

It's got a Smashing Pumpkins overlaid and overdriven guitar sound alongside fairly normal full throated rock bellowing. It's ok.

I don't normally like this style of music but this was pretty decent

Not for me 👎🏻

There's a certain type of guitar sound that I have a really visceral, negative reaction to, and this is it. It's that heavy, muddy sound. I don't know why, but I just don't like it. Some of the songs were pretty good though, especially the last one. 3 stars.

At first it seemed promising, as it really sounded like rock, however as the tracks progressed it fell flat for me, it didn't achieve intensity and the music dominated over the vocals making it diffuse and causing it to pass without pain or glory.

This was fine but to me sounded like a whole lot of post-punk/hardcore fare (Hüsker Dü, Dinosaur Jr., Pavement and so forth) without adding much anything new.

I discovered Hum during the pandemic when they dropped their most recent LP, and instantly it was clear how influential and timeless this band is. The ‘space rock’ tag could easily end up invoking dopey 90s’ pop in disguise, but Hum make it stick with unrelenting walls of guitar and a perfectly-mixed rhythm section that keep the whole effort somehow tethered to Earth. Though some of the quieter, downtempo tracks feel a tad out of place on this album, the project as a whole presents an unapologetic artistic vision that clearly evokes a natural extension of the 90s grunge scene while feeling timeless even to this day. This LP in particular encapsulates the most visceral of Hum’s songwriting – the lyrics aren’t going to win a Pulitzer, but they manage to add just enough depth to some of the band’s most insane instrumentals that pushes this LP to the top for me. The loss of drummer Bryan St. Pere a few years ago was a huge loss for the band and music as a whole, especially for an outfit that had clearly maintained their form and had so much more to say musically. That the band already has such a rock-steady discography to stand on is a testament to how clearly locked in this band was on their vision, one that managed to feel deep but with its hair down at the same time. I’m definitely biased (I listened to ‘Stars’ 120+ times this year), but this band still does not get the credit it’s due for subtly altering the course of rock to come.