Colony House - Only the Lonely

Colony House
Only the Lonely
2017
Spotify

Colony House are back with their sophomore release Only the Lonely and the Tennessee foursome have swung for the fences with this one. The music is big and bold with their Christian-ish inspired song writing and stadium filling guitar lines. Often when someone makes it big in pop there will come a Christian imitator who takes their sound and bends it for the praise songs, but Colony House don't make that their entire focus. Probably their closest influence is Switchfoot, whom they have toured with in the past, and that big sound meant for everyone to sing along with. It is well worn territory for a band, and to stick out you really need to do something either extremely well or more interestingly than anyone else. Unfortunately Colony House really do neither and the album sort of comes out as "just good enough". There are many tracks that you may find yourself bobbing your head along with but it goes in one ear and straight out the other. Songs like "3:20" try to be big and bold but often the feel more like imitations than something original. The vocals throughout the record are heavily affected which is an odd choice and really does not add much either way. There are so many times where Colony House have a great idea like on "I Want It All" but they aren't able to fully deliver on what they've begun.

Colony House have a very similar sound to Coasts, but it seems like Coasts is able to push it further and do more within the genre rather than pumping out the same song over and over again. The music is exciting on Only the Lonely but that excitement only lasts briefly because Colony House can't seem to keep evolving an idea and make it really stick with you. While listening to this record I actually had to go back more than usual because the songs were all so disposable it was hard to really focus on what was being done and said. Somehow this record debuted at number 3 on itunes, which really calls into question the algorithm over there. This road is just so well worn that an album like this has to be absolutely incredible in order to make a dent, and it simply does not. That lands this album right where you don't want to be, somewhere in the middle.

5.1 out of 10