Album Review: Houndstooth

[POSTCARDS FROM SOMEWHERE] Appropriately for an album informed by the perpetual displacement of life on the road, No News From Home, the second full-length from kaleidoscopic folkies Houndstooth, begins with the band already in motion. Opener "Bliss Boat," a motoring bit of country rock by way of the German Autobahn, comes in with the gas pedal down, chugging along on an insistent, almost krautrocking rhythm, suggesting miles of highway were in the rearview before the listener even hit "Play." "Lately I've been thinking of the fall," sings Katie Bernstein with the detachment of someone who's been staring out the passenger-side window too long.

For a small-time touring band, the most pervasive hazard of living out of a van is not blown tires but the places idle minds drift when left to wander in those hours upon hours between gigs. As one might guess, on No News From Home, thoughts in the Houndstooth van most often turn to home, in one form or another. On the jangling title track, Bernstein, sounding like a less rambly Courtney Barnett, frets over the radio silence she's receiving from the crush keeping her tethered to the place she left behind. On "Wasted Hours," singer-guitarist John Gnorski outright begs to be taken back to "where I belong," but "every road leads to the East/ There's no escape for me." The phrase "you can't take it with you when you go," uttered on the slow-burn ballad "Green Light," is the album's thematic tagline—"it" meaning anything from a loved one to the entire topography of the Pacific Northwest.

But hey, at least they've got each other. Gnorski wraps Bernstein's sweet-sad melodies in warm, slinky leads, while bassist James Mitchell and drummer Graeme Gibson dutifully keep the train a-rollin' to the next town. Some weariness sets in during the homestretch, as the propulsion starts to drag and the songwriting blurs. But that's just as well: With any road trip, you can rarely expect the endpoint to live up to the time spent getting there.

SEE IT: Houndstooth plays Bunk Bar, 1028 SE Water Ave., with No La La, on Saturday, April 4. 10 pm. $8 advance, $10 day of show. 21+.

WWeek 2015