Companion, the latest album from Nashville, Tenn., four-piece Humming House, is a sunny collection of exuberant pop filled with hope and highly-danceable grooves but maintains a thin line of the band's folky DNA.
The record, released Friday on Soundly Music, also reflects the band's growth from living-room folkies to a bigger, more radio-friendly sound. Humming House returns tonight to South on Main in Little Rock. Fellow Nashville resident Becca Mancari will open.
Humming House
Opening act: Becca Mancari
8 p.m. today, South on Main, 1304 Main St., Little Rock
Admission: $10
(501) 244-9660
"This is our third studio record and it's fun to progress as we move along with these records and rethink what you're doing," says Humming House frontman Justin Wade Tam. "That's what we did on this project."
While the group's acoustic-leaning, jam-session vibe is front and center on the previous records -- 2012's self-titled debut and 2015's Revelries -- Tam and bandmates Joshua Wolak, Bobby Chase and Benjamin Jones paint a broader aural landscape on Companion.
"We decided to not abandon those folk roots," he says, "but it's definitely a lot louder than before. Previously, we kind of put ourselves into a box with the string-band thing, and the set rules on what instruments we would play, primarily acoustic. This time we threw that out the window."
The first single, the poppy, funky "Takin' Over," is an escapist romp written with Nashville songwriter Allen Salmon that showed up rather late in the recording process, Tam says.
"We just wrote it in a day and I didn't think it was initially going to be a Humming House song, but the guys really liked it and the label liked it, so we decided to put it on the record and it ended up being the first single."
Humming House got started in -- get this -- a house. Specifically, Tam's Nashville abode. The San Diego transplant moved to Music City in 2002 to go to school and by 2011 was hosting whiskey-fueled jam sessions centered on traditional Irish folk and pub songs at his house.
"I was writing some original music at the time and some of the guys who came to jam, including Josh Wolak and Ben Jones, ended up falling into the original stuff as well," Tam says. "It was a natural progression to say, 'Hey, come over and play on some of these songs I've been writing.'"
Though the band members come from different backgrounds, their influences are similar -- a mishmash of Talking Heads, Paul Simon, Beck and Crosby Stills & Nash.
"I think a lot of those influences shine through on this record," Tam says.
The album was recorded within walking distance of Tam's East Nashville home at The Casino, a studio owned by Eric Masse, with production help from Masse and Jordan Lehning.
"Because we were trying to push ourselves into a new sonic space, having outside help doing that was really valuable," Tam says. "They pushed us where we wanted to go. Jordan's an amazing arranger and Eric is great at getting good sounds."
The title track, with its sweet vocal harmonies, was turned into an equally sweet video featuring crowd-sourced footage of the band's fans and their relationships.
"We asked couples to submit footage of themselves, either memorable moments or just hanging out and having fun," Tam says. "We got a good number of submissions from our fan base and then did some guerrilla footage in our community. We did the most Nashville thing you could do, which is say, 'Hey, do you want to be in our music video?' And it turned out really well."
Style on 10/10/2017