LP review: The Almighty Rhombus “Lucid Living”

by Samuel Hernandez

The Almighty Rhombus is a band to be afraid of — the lead into their new album Lucid Living begins like a low-budget horror flick, with throbbing ethereal sonics of impending murder and a span over the foreboding environment, the music begins with lo-fi gooeyness that is sunshine over the sense of unease. With a pre-release in March, and now a full-length debut on October 30, 2013 is shaping to be a productive year for the band.

Lucid Living is promises kept, keeping the garage feel while capturing a lighthearted things-are-going-to-be-okay pop feel. The track “Blank” is a swinging summer ballad of unrequited love where the protagonist is every teenager without the guts to walk up to a crush and strike up a conversation: “I don’t know anything about you/walk out the door.” It’s a creative take on the pining love song. In place of a female name for the receptacle for unabashed metaphors and lyrical flowers,  you get a fill in the blank, what would most realistically happen when you objectify from a distance. The song is relatable, and gets the deeply affecting follow up of “House Burns Down” where things take a turn for the worse and well… a house burns down.

“Thunderstorm” finds a way to bring the disaffected youth theme to a head (and continues the motif of summer, making me wonder if I had heard this album in June or July how often would it have been fitting right into my earbuds as I ran, trying to keep pace with your high school band that was never this good but should have been). With the anthemic guitars and keyboards charging forward, the vocals give us charming harmonies around “I was a pirate’s son” (woo oooo).

The Almighty Rhombus are flying-under-the-radar, carefree summer camp music which has the intelligence of knowing what it sounds like and making fun of that just a little bit. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the song “Summer Dreams” or “Vacation” as compelling evidence that next summer this is going to be the album you play over and over. But with the (almost) Halloween release, the lyrics at times are subconsciously dark, like the band, there is something threatening looming underneath it all. “You are sleeping in the morning/While I’m stealing all of your stuff,” you want to be in fling with this band because of the lull and enticement of these songs, but either one of you are going to end up the crazed stalker. Cue the horror film score.