Stay Home

The Beets' music suggests the Ramones playing with Beat Happening's chops and equipment, which is to say, their songs are good in a simple, willfully primitive way, and that they play in such a manner that the songs had better be good, because you're sure not listening for the nuances of the performance. That said, the Beets have improved just enough on their second album, Stay Home, that they sound less like hipsters feigning ineptitude than they did on their debut, Spit in the Face of People Who Don't Want to be Cool. Juan Wauters, the group's leader, still isn't much of a guitar player, but he's at least learned how to better fill up the spaces, and he isn't always egregiously out of tune (most of the time, sure, but not always), and bassist Jose Garcia and drummer Matthew Volz keep their beats dirt simple but hold down the groove solid and steady. Stay Home is a concept album in that the songs all concern the notion of staying home, though the theme comes through with significantly greater clarity on some tunes than others; using hatching from an egg as a metaphor for leaving behind all that you've known on "Hens and Roosters" is a pretty solid metaphor, but exactly what "Knock On Wood" is supposed to be telling us is hard to say, between Wauters' mushy phrasing and the vocals being so low in the mix. However, the primitivism of the performances and the recording doesn't disguise the fact that the Beets have a genuine knack for melodies, and songs like "Just a Whim," "Dead," and "Pops n' Me" catch in the ear with enough strength that it doesn't matter that this could have been recorded on a boom box in someone's rec room. All in all, Stay Home is a step up from the Beets' debut, though it's hard not to imagine they're going to have to face the choice of either learning to play or hitting the creative wall some time in the future. (Oh, and leave it to others to debate if the cartoon on the cover is racist or merely in poor taste; but either way, it sure isn't funny.)