With Detrola, His Name Is Alive brainchild Warren Defever finally combines all his musical interests on one album! Whether it's soulful heavy soul, gurgling electro-pop, smooth confessional indie-folk, or strange bedroom croon tunes--they're all here. It's not exactly "cohesive." In fact, the whole thing sounds more like a mix tape or a collection of career-spanning demos. But when Lovetta Pippen's impressive voice collides perfectly with Defever's eerie, pretty, and downright sexy production--as it does on more than half this album--the results are wonderful. Thank goodness H.N.I.A. has returned from semi-retirement! No one else could make music that sounds like this, no matter how hard they tried. On a parallel world, these guys have sold at least as many records as the Eurythmics or... Less

With Detrola, His Name Is Alive brainchild Warren Defever finally combines all his musical interests on one album! Whether it's soulful heavy soul, gurgling electro-pop, smooth confessional indie-folk, or strange bedroom croon tunes--they're all here. It's not exactly "cohesive." In fact, the whole thing sounds more like a mix tape or a collection of career-spanning demos. But when Lovetta Pippen's impressive voice collides perfectly with Defever's eerie, pretty, and downright sexy production--as it does on more than half this album--the results are wonderful. Thank goodness H.N.I.A. has returned from semi-retirement! No one else could make music that sounds like this, no matter how hard they tried. On a parallel world, these guys have sold at least as many records as the Eurythmics or... Less

Arriving a little over a year and a half after His Name Is Alive's long-awaited comeback Detrola, Xmmer follows in that album's footsteps -- in fact, "Go to Hell Mountain" is a sequel to Detrola's "I Thought I Saw You Moving." Once again, it sounds like all of the band's previous albums rolled into one, although a die-hard fan could get really geeky and say that more of Ft. Lake, Mouth by Mouth, and Home Is in Your Head's influences stand out this time. The biggest difference is that sometime His Name Is Alive singer Lovetta Pippen doesn't make an appearance; while she is missed, Xmmer is still a shining example of the group's singular pop. His Name Is Alive is probably the only group around who could write a song about foreign soldiers invading a house and killing its occupants and have... Less