Empty Houses
Daydream
Release Date: Jun 10, 2016
Genre(s): R&B, Pop/Rock, Adult Alternative Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Adult Contemporary R&B, Indie Pop, Retro-Soul
Record label: Sargent House
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Album Review: Daydream by Empty Houses
Great, Based on 2 Critics
Based on rating 7.9/10
Over the years, Sargent House has been providing you with a steady stream of really performative, jarring and technical acts like Tera Melos and TTNG. As a management company, they were the ones who broke the obscure, meme worthy and difficult to define Deafheaven back in 2011, and as a record label, in 2012 released a remastered version of their first demo on vinyl. Even less blatantly virtuosic releases like Chelsea Wolfe’s 2015 album Abyss are sensibly dense, grim and wandering.
Based on rating 7/10
Daydream is the vintage convertible-friendly full-length debut of Empty Houses, a wryly named Detroit trio consisting of singer Ali Shea and multi-instrumentalists Dave Mackinder and Adam Mercer, both of pop-punk band Fireworks. The punk, however, is left far behind as the guys instead follow the lead of Shea's classic, Ronnie Spector-esque vocal quality and infuse their soulful indie pop with the unmistakable sounds of Motown and Phil Spector. The effervescent "Better of Me" opens the album and establishes Shea as more than a mere tribute-band leader.
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