Songs of Nominal variety

The first track on the Noms’ new EP, Choices, promises “Good, Good Times.”
The Noms deliver on this guarantee, but the album unfortunately doesn’t offer enough choices.

The band provides enjoyable country-twinged indie rock in the vein of Ben Harper or Jack Johnson. Lead singers Mike Mares, Michelle Baumann, and Jesse Herrera make skilled use of their intertwining male-female vocal dynamic, a style that has become popular in indie circles with bands like Beach House and A Weather.

The voices’ intertwining melodies circle each other and play off the guitar lines to pleasant effect.
The instrumentation is similarly well-conceived. The guitar parts and bass parts fit together perfectly — for an example of this, check out the title track, “Choices.”

The album’s strongest track is probably “Pocket Full of Change.”
Mares sings “All I got to my name/ is a pocket full of change,” over music that would sound at home in a bar on Sixth Street in Austin, Texas. Despite the melancholy lyrics, the song comes off as relaxing, just like every other track on the album.
The Noms’ music seems tailor-made to sitting on a back porch on a summer day.

The problem is that there is not enough variety. The Noms have figured out a good formula, and it leans on it heavily.
Every song follows the same formula: twangy guitar intro, with the other instruments kicking in after a few bars.

Mares and Baumann sing as if they’re expressing the same emotion in every song, which they usually are. But it’s a little jarring when Mares’ voice sounds the same while singing about “Good, Good Times” versus “Pocket Full Of Change.”

The Noms’ EP is impeccably produced, proving once again that local bands can in fact record a professional-sounding album. Each song is well-done, and quite enjoyable even if you associate country music with the image of Texans in comically oversized pickup trucks.
The indie-music vibe shines through the country melodies, and the album definitely has the capacity to lift your spirits after a long work day.

The fact that all the songs sound the same is certainly more excusable on a six-song EP like Choices than it would be on a full-length LP, and it’s hard to fault the band for going for cohesion in its work.

Still, the Noms need to expand its sonic vocabulary if it wants to join the big leagues. Pick up the band’s new album if you want some lightweight chill-out music, but don’t expect a wide variety in its work.