Spectreview: Racoma – This Front Room

Racoma’s debut LP is an exquisitely-produced, luxuriantly-paced record that plays to the band’s strengths.

-DEEP PINK-

For a guide to the review color rating system, click here.

Seattle-based band Racoma are not, as one might expect, based in Tacoma. They are, however, based in the country-folk/indie-rock melange that’s been sweeping certain parts of the PNW for a while now. Their debut release, This Front Room, moves slowly and unfurls luxuriantly like a lazy Sunday morning. It’s exquisitely produced for an independent release, in large part due to band member Sean Collopy’s talents as an engineer, but also thanks to the band’s ability to record at their home in Mountlake Terrace. Home recordings allow both security and comfort, terms that serve this record well. Its lead singles, “The Kicker” and closing track “Heavy Being You,” are still savvy choices for how powerfully they represent the band’s twilit, amicable approach to indie rock, but there are also formidable surprises hidden among the tracklist. “Dog Bones” carries the zero into a surging second half, while “Outside (For Now)” and “Fucked Up” feel like substantial improvements on Coldplay’s first record. The true treasures lie right at the end, in the crisp nostalgia of “Morning Cartoons” and the show-stopping “Dear Brother,” the latter of which is so impressively constructed it’s a wonder the band didn’t lead with it. The influences might be a little well-tread, but it’s just as virtuous to play to your strengths than try something new and trip up. Clearly that’s not what’s happened here; as far as debuts go, Racoma seem to have taken the time to put out what can only be described as a definitive statement.

Recommended for sitting next to an open window.