Album Of The Year (Of The Week): Houndmouth "Little Neon Limelight"!

While I was quite enamored by the Alabama Shakes' 2012 album Boys & Girls, their latest platter suffers just a bit from singer Brittany Howard's current flirtation with turning every song into a Janis Joplin-esque vocal workout.  We get it, she can sing, but on their new full-length, Sound & Color, the songs themselves aren't nearly as developed, nor rump-shaking.

Which is why Little Neon Limelight, the latest album from New Albany, Indiana's Houndmouth comes as such a breath of fresh air, revelatory in its devil-may-care energy and the band putting up one helluva unified front in serving each and every song that comes down the pike.

The end result is an album full of rootsy, revivalist rock that puts the band in the same stratosphere as Jack White, Ryan Adams, Black Keys, and the aforementioned Alabama Shakes.  Singer Matt Myers may not have the most recognizable voice in alt. country, but there's an expressiveness and soul that makes each tune seem as if singer and listener are discovering each song's melodic gifts together.

Yes, this is well-traveled musical territory - no reinvention of the wheel here - but tunes like "My Cousin Greg" and "15 Years" slyly manage to breath new life into familiar landscapes with performances that bristle with the sort of excitement that perhaps bands like the Black Keys and Alabama Shakes have outgrown.

Whether such a fate awaits Houndmouth once every hipster from here to Williamsburg and back starts singing their praises remains to be seen, but for now, this is a band playing with the exuberance and tenacity of a band still only playing "for the love of the game".