Hum- You’d Prefer an Astronaut (1995):

This is one of the more mainstream music reviews that I’ll be writing, even though many people have probably not heard of this band. Although, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you haven’t heard one of this band’s songs. The album that I will be reviewing is You’d Prefer an Astronaut by the band Hum. The opening track is “Little Dipper”, a nice slow song with some sort of danceable element to it for people into rock music overall as many Hum songs do. The following track “The Pod” is not one of those types of songs however. In fact, it is more of a track you’d just move senselessly to in the car or a type of slamdance if you’d dance to it at all. The song is just driven by pure emotion as an amazing piece such as this must be, and the anger is surging through the guitars amps and is delivered directly when the screams in the vocals echo. “The Pod” then nicely descends into more of an acoustic feel, ending the song. “Stars” succeeds it, and this is Hum’s most famous song as you may have heard it on some sort of streaming service or quite possibly your radio. What else is there for me to say other than the quite-loud aspect of rock is perfectly exemplified here, the songs parts compound on top of each other, and if you listen deep enough you can hear the sweetest blends of bass and tone to make it absolutely possible for one to fall in love with a song. “Suicide Machine” follows with a nice ambiance delivered by subtle background noises and a great chord progression. “The Very Old Man” is a song that is mainly just vocals and clean guitar riffing up until some light drums kick in; it is very mellow and calming. The track entitled “Why I Like The Robins” is smoothing, but there’s a bit of a twist. When you listen to the song, there is quite an unnerving aspect to; one that I cannot put my finger on. The song later explodes into roaring and screeching guitar that will make you wish that the entire song was like that and that you want more noise. The succeeding track does just that, with “I’d Like Your Hair Long”; a strong and confident song. Later on the track almost disassembles and then puts itself back together with a more angry tone than the first portion. “I Hate It Too” is a track that speaks with great conviction and really makes you start to hate and mourn the loss of something very important to him. It’s really important that the title has the word “too” in it, because it’s more leaning on the fence of bargaining than accepting what is lost being gone. The final track “Songs of Farewell and Departure” is the most soulful part of the album that really just ends everything on a sad but optimistic note. Overall, You’d Prefer an Astronaut is an excellent record that I recommend that many of you listen to. I’m not a music connoisseur, I just listen to the good stuff.