FRESH BAKED
in NYC
Home Video
It Will Be OK
2009 | Etch n Sketch
B

Brooklyn band Home Video released the follow-up to their first record, No Certain Night Or Morning, last January. The EP is called It Will Be OK, and continues the electronica/rock sound that they helped establish in the early 2000s, long after other bands with lighter stomachs abandoned the genre for newer trends.

It Will Be OK is softer than their previous LP, and aims for subtler electronic beats. It’s possible that the band is more confident in their sound, and feels less of a need to pound out a heavy backbeat to get a crowd on their feet at live shows. Despite the somewhat softer sound, the EP is very much danceable, and will likely be a joy to hear live [Editor’s Note: It was. Look forward to our write-up of Home Video playing the JM Monthly Feature Show].

The standout track on the EP is “Every Love That Ever Was,” which begins with what sounds like a nod to the sequencer in the Who’s “Eminence Front,” before snapping into an inspiring take on M83. Certainly, one cannot avoid making a comparison to Radiohead; the vocals are deeply and unashamedly in debt to Thom Yorke. And at this point, more than a decade after Radiohead’s first groundbreaking release (1997’s OK Computer), comparisons to the band should only be used to describe what another band is doing right, rather than to demonstrate a lack of originality, as was previously the case with these comparisons.

Overall, the EP is worth a listen, perfectly suitable for the slowly approaching winter malaise.

by Joe Veix

Home Video is our November Feature Artist. Read our interview with them here.

LOCAL SPOTLIGHT NYC

Collin Ruffino and David Gross of Brooklyn duo Home Video are longtime friends, originally from New Orleans, who mold electronic sounds and vocals into dark, ambient pop songs. They recently sat down with JM.com writer Raj Mallikarjuna in their Park Slope home studio to discuss the evolution of their music, their influences and their live shows. You can check out Home Video tonight at JezebelMusic.com’s November Feature Show. 

JM.com: I read that you two met in high school art class and came from different musical backgrounds. How did you guys connect over music? Did you start writing music right away together?

David: Not right away. [To Collin] I remember your little Walkman in art class. He played me a tape of something he was working on with another friend of ours, Paul, and it kind of blew me away, and I got really interested in getting involved with that kind of thing.

JM.com: And one of you guys has a classical music background, right?

David: Yeah, that’s me.

JM.com: What did you play?

David: Piano.

JM.com: Piano. And what kind of music was he making that made you decide to work together?

David: Um, how would you describe it?

Collin: I guess at the time it was influenced by trip-hop stuff mostly, like Portishead and Massive Attack. I don’t know at that time actually if it was. It was trying to be that stuff but it couldn’t be there. It was almost ambient with beats.

David: And really awesome chord progressions and stuff.

Collin: It was sort of like rock but in a different way, that he hadn’t heard.

David: Beats. There were beats.
More on Home Video

THIS WEEK IN SHOWS

TUES, NOV. 10

Free Energy, Diehard, Small Black
The Bell House
7:30 PM, $8, 18+
I don’t know how I feel when, on their self-titled track, the lead singer of Free Energy says that he’s “making out with the wind,” but they’ve got a great, if sometimes corny, teenage ’70s power-pop feel, especially on the glammy “Dream City.” But the reason I first got excited about this show is that I somehow managed to miss Small Black during CMJ, and after reading our writer Tricia Patterson’s interview, I got all amped up to go see them this time round. (Shameless plug, yes, but also totally true.)

THURS, NOV. 12

Home Video, Dead Heart Bloom, Heads Up Display
Public Assembly
9:00 PM, $8, 21+
Yes, it’s the JezebelMusic.com Monthly Feature Show. It’s also a great chance to check out the gorgeous haunt of Home Video’s electro rock. Their song “Every Love That Ever Was” always makes me picture a montage sequence of some film where a couple has broken up but is still in love; maybe someone shuts a door, then slides down it in tears. Or a Tuesday night when you’re home alone, and you feel alone, and you realize tomorrow will be the same. Not to say this band is oversteeped in depression – their beats tread too swiftly and the keyboards soar too high to wallow – but Home Video has a way of cutting deep, to something structural, a basic human longing.
More on This Week In Shows