homescience produce gorgeous, off-kilter pop music that recalls the leftfield brilliance of built to spill, grandaddy and the flaming lips. andrew ward's fragile vocals flit tentatively over joyous pop-country played, it seems, on my first instruments. the brilliantly named, 'the mother superior teardrop factory' opens proceedings to uplifting effect and is followed by eleven more beach-boys-on-acid classics. 'jungling' is homescience's third album of envelope-pushing genius and should be the record that makes them justifiable stars.
hmv

okay i'll admit that there's a tiny part of my heart that will always be home to anything that homescience endeavour to do, it's something that was given up without fight after hearing their debut release, the spiffing 'end the year' ep from 2001, a record that hinted at a uniquely special talent in the offing.
three years on and though they haven't quite set the world alight (wrong place, wrong time), they have managed to tuck beneath their collective belts two albums and a plethora of top drawer singles that would make most bands as proud as punch to call their own, their sounds are carved in an aura of innocence from the drunken goofy motifs found lounging amid the grooves of the rainbow washed 'june' to the opening 'the mother superior teardrop factory' which veers close to the velvets had they of course been reared in some idyllic picturesque rural spot with the sounds of serene streams ebbing away in the distance and the harmonies of nature's wildlife keeping them lulled (even if on the way it does pick at manfred mann's 'if you gotta go, go now'). 'jungling' presents the listener with a twelve track 34 minute kaleidoscopic journey that courts playfully with the more surrealist edges of americana while unifying the divide between the fence collective and elephant 6 (most notably apples in stereo / the busy signals) and aligning to it a traditional soft psyche sheen that's dizzily abundant in its revelling in quirky lysergic sunshine pop.
so idling in demeanour it is, 'jungling' barely moves beyond third gear yet still has enough in the tank to be all at once tempting and carefree, 'take it easy' neatly finds the ensemble closing down on the soft top pristine pop of velvet crush while the heartbreaking nostalgic refinement of moviola is taken to task on the beautifully melancholic tinged 'letterbox blues'. 'forklift truck' has the quartet upping the ante a few notches, as crooked as it tries to be, it can't resist dipping into the pixies bag of tricks for some stinging hook laden angular pop.
elsewhere the music hall oddness of 'at the back off my mind' and the naive 'ask for the week' guide you by the hand for a hazy ride across lennon and mccartney's old hunting grounds and as though to even up the score of referencing 60's icons 'so far away' is nothing if it isn't the sound of ma wilson's sons sitting around a campfire slowly getting stoned. something of a priceless release methinks.
mark barton - losing today magazine

i often marvel at the way musicians can compose music. although i can listen to something and think: "yes, that's good. that makes me feel something" i have no imagination when it comes to arranging music. homescience, on the other hand, are the sort of group who have an overabundance of imagination.
jungling, the third album from the edinburgh based band, has a happy go lucky feel that seems so natural it'll melt your worries. each song is made up of an unlikely collection of instruments and gadgets. each producing its own unique and distinct sound. on their own these sounds are a bunch of misshaped misfits but place them in the hands of homescience you begin to see a rather magical jigsaw puzzle. and just like a jigsaw puzzle it is not until you look closely at each song that you realise everything that it is made up of.
but that is only the start.
the album is beautifully zany displaying a tenderness and compassion which will take you back to childhood games. the almost random string of words conjure up the kind of enchanted world that seems to get lost past adulthood:
"sandals and watching frogs jumping to be apart
late nights and fireflies stretching to be apart"
this is music for anyone in need of a holiday but without the time to leave the house.
rachel queen - friends of the heroes

on the starting blocks this week we have homescience's third album jungling. this scottish quintet love their acoustic guitars, toy glockenspiels, jaunty pianos and electric trembles, and exclude that perennial caledonian melancholy. mixed with this though are the touchstones of many bands of the minute, granddaddy and mercury rev. yet homescience take a stumble away from these influences and infuse their songs with humour and soundscapes galore. 'blueprints' squelches along beautifully while 'letterbox blues' is a recorded-led gem that sounds like it would take pride of place in the beach boys' back catalogue.
ali macqueen - record collector

can a band that starts off its album with a song called "the mother superior teardrop factory" play anything but psychedelic music? the uk band homescience fill their third album with a dream-the-afternoon-away atmosphere formed by 1960s musical allusions, delicate melodies, fat bass lines, soft keyboards, and a singer with a high, off-in-his-own mind voice...and it's lovely all the way. but as transporting as their music is, they're not tripping of to galaxies far far away; these songs aren't science fiction, they're about everyday life and the ways you deal with it (its fleeting nature, its beauty, its pain and boredom). they perfectly capture the feeling of being lost in the shuffle ("you had dreams of frogs and monkeys/i had dreams of cars/now you've left the railway station/you don't know where you are"), of yearning for something more than what's around us ("i want something i can't always see, something that reveals itself to me"), and of using imagination to escape from tears ("slow beating hearts can't take the darts/so keep it locked up inside of your head"), and in doing so they relate all of the dreamy textures to real feelings and situations.
dave heaton - erasing clouds

americana, edinburgh-style. this is homescience's 3rd album and their most realised yet. 'the mother superior teardrop factory' evokes memories of flower power; 'chemical hearts' is another standout, a frankly silly, big daft 60s singalong song for when grandaddy decide to make a monkees-style sitcom. delicate melodies float around the ether before installing themselves in your subconscious while the semi-distorted 'june' is lo-in-fi but hi in hummability. sometimes lazily compared to the flaming lips or granddaddy, the fractured vocals and slightly skewed americana do prevail at times. however, there's more to homescience as their uk roots shine through the joyous mishmash, with an almost gospel-style psychedelia of singalong choruses and intricate melodies.
stuart mchugh - is this music?

edinburgh collective homesciene are an odd bunch, seemingly out of place and time with most uk bands operating right now. jungling, their third lp, is a lovingly crafted and sprawling record of countrified widescreen on a limited budget, packed full of homemade tunes filled with tales of summer vacations and - oddly enough - monkeys and frogs.
"the mother superior teardrop factory" is a lost slice of beach boys or crosy, stills and nash, sun-baked delicate melodies backed by a rattling toy-box band, andy ward's understated and fragile vocals coming in halfway between mercury rev's jonathon donahue and the frail cracking of wayne coyne. elsewhere "take it easy" with its acoustic strumming and chiming xylophones would slot perfectly onto any late teenage fanclub lp, which in our book is a recommendation of the highest order.
at times punch-drunk and giddy on their own inspiration homescience remind us of magoo, another underrated bunch of inspired lo-fi types operating by their own rules on the fringes of the uk indie scene. jungling doesn't always meet the high watermark set by its influences, it meanders off occasionally, shifting into the evil area of schimdie but for much of the lp anyone that's heard langley schools music project will recognise the beauty to be found in a cheaply recorded cacophony of instrumentation when it's based on a faultless melodies. and in this case it comes highly recommended to anyone with a heart and good pair of ears.
nick farrow - the stereo effect

saturday morning cartoons and summertime are eternally connected in my subconscious. chalk it up to boyhood preferences sticking together, because i know i didn't only watch cartoons in the summer. jungling, however, seems bent on deepening that connection.
jungling sounds like summer playing through a portable radio, and like saturday morning cartoons, inasmuch as it's filled with delightful sound effects. in its base form, it's sunny, quirky indie pop, but its rays illuminate many additional influences. the band throws in copious amounts of '60s pop, midwestern swagger and sounds that, at least for me, recall saturday morning animated hijinks (they apparently have a fondness for toy instruments). "forklift truck" even features an exercise in pseudo-psychedelia. for a midwesterner raised on my parents' records and loads of cartoons, this feels just like home.
lead singer andy ward's soft and slightly wavering vocals sound like something a whispering wayne coyne might emit, perhaps after inhaling a bit of helium. in fact, the band's use of so many unconventional sounds occasionally paints them as a less virtuosic and less grandiose flaming lips. no, they're not geniuses, but homescience make some nice music.
these songs are looser than previous homescience releases, and the album as a whole sounds less produced. it all works to the band's advantage, giving the songs a much earthier feel. there's a spirit of playfulness in the band's use of synths and sounds that likely would not be as noticeable on a sterilized recording.
the album's almost haphazard use of sounds, however, is also the source of one of homescience's shortcomings: sometimes the sounds are piled too high. besides, if you've spent any time messing around with toy instruments you know that it's nearly impossible to tune the suckers. such overuse of textures and tonal cheating can undermine the melodic sensibilities of a song like "june", which, until the overloaded chorus, is a fantastic tune.
fortunately, the songs hit like sunbursts more often than sledgehammers, and the beach-ready melodies of "chemical hearts" and "at the back of my mind" are the perfect accompaniment for a summer day.
why jungling makes me think specifically of schoolhouse rock is anybody's guess.
chris skillern - splendid

edinburgh based homescience have been compared to the likes of fellow countrymen teenage fanclub, for their americana leaning music, and also to the beach boys, for their melodic inventions and soundplay. i've compared them, favourably, with sparklehorse, with whom they share a lo-fi sensibility, and this time i am going to throw in the beatles, as there are harmonies and tunes here that make me think of parts of the white album or abbey road.
whilst there's no great musical shift in homscience's third album, jungling does see them perfecting their aural vision in what is their best album to date. the first thing you hear is its sixties production - copying those early stereo tracks where bass and drums are in one speaker whilst guitars and voices fill the left field. listen to the beatles' revolver, for example. i always find that makes for a terrible headphone experience and so this record demanded to be played through the speakers. and the playing feels almost sixties, slightly slow as if behind the beat all the time. it makes it feel organic/analogue and a refusal to be bound to time clicks and sequencing. commendable. add to this a gleeful appreciation of toy instruments (the rising recorder notes that make the main riff of the bittersweet 'letterbox blues', or the child xylophone which appears on many tracks) which are surprising and endearing. the little melodies they add are a touch of heartfelt genius. you might think this makes the album sound mannered or laboured. it doesn't. they effect of this is to harken back to a time of innocence, a sense of loss, a sense of sadness perhaps. and there is melancholy too in andy ward's (assumingly) assumed americana lilt which fragiley drawls lines like "we're just two packages left behind in a letterbox/addressed and alone stamped with nowhere to go" ('letterbox blues').
every track here has something to commend it - a melody, a line, a sound - and there's a cohesion throughout that indicates some genius at work. one of those albums that rewards on every listen.
kev o - soundsxp

whichever tasty hack said that homescience were cack is a big spacker. because they're great. i just wanted to clear that up before we go any further. 'jungling' is such a great little album on so many levels. be it the wonderfully laid back shamble of 'take it easy', which is the least danceable track ever that you can dance to...ermm...if you know what i mean, or mangled pop of 'at the back of my mind'.
much of 'jungling' (and what an awful title that is) brings to mind the frazzled genius of elf power and many of the elefant 6 collective. and that, my friends, is a mighty fine thing indeed.
sam metcalf - tasty

never more aptly-named, homescience is the four walls of diy indie-pop as painted by edinburgh-based andrew ward. a one-man grandaddy locked in a carpenter's shed on wobbly foundations; ward twangs toy instruments to topsy-turvy tales. he's the kind of musician you'll find playing a pub, in every town, on every single night of the week, but what elevates him is his sense of surrealism. as inconsistent as you'd expect then, 'jungling' comes with a "just woken up, out dropped my 2nd album" anti-quality about it, yet it's easy to forgive when ward gives you winners like the flaming lips-esque 'take it easy'. the divorced beach boys with a £5 solo settlement, homescience is an art-form of slap-happy value
ian fletcher - logo magazine

'quirky' is a term that certainly applies to 'jungling', as is 'charming' and, well, 'a bit tinny'. these are pithy, lethargic sounds owing a great deal to an elephant 6 influence, with a doleful delivery akin to mercury rev, with tiny sounds both graceful and tricky propping up the lo-fi body. the elastic band twang that hides behind 'the mother superior teardrop factory', the rubbery scuzz of 'forklift truck' and the vaguely annoying but mesmerising 'chemical hearts' will capture your love. be wrapped up in their gentleness and their skewed vision today!
skif - vanity project

i am not exactly sure how i've managed to avoid the existence of homescience over the past few years. given that they're from edinburgh and already onto their third album it's hard to believe, but that's the breaks sometimes, and at least i've caught up now.
steven mccarron - stay fun

if you like the pastels and the rather super aislers set then you'll like homescience. the latest in a long line of scottish style pop. lots of toy instruments as well, which is always a plus.
tm - people say things about music

edinburgh's homescience must be quick learners. four years ago the band released a fine ep on pickled egg, which however also featured much introverted mumbling that in turn was overruled by a powerful wall of screeching indie guitars. our editor john clarkson also once witnessed the band put on a dismal performance in their native city, but on record that failure seems like aeons ago.
the 2002 album 'songs for sick days' built on the edges of that sound and introduced composure. and on 'jungling' those qualities have been polished out and cut to snappy proportions exactly in the style a perfect pop song needs.
well-dosed moments of harmony and jangling, certainly not jungling, carry homescience's second album all the way through to silent pop-stardom. 'take it easy' shows how much a melody plus a fragile orchestration can do to a song and how they can turn it into a four-minute wonder. homescience are three gentlemen and one woman who are keen on happy-sad tunes and you get a full dozen of these on 'jungling'.
another favoured track is 'at the back of my mind' in which a gorgeous yet simple keyboard riff leads onto andy ward's skiing on snares.lifting the foggy veil from homescience's past, the band amends the repertoire of so many 60's and 70's icons and churn out 12 songs which are entirely their own and could become this year's thingamajigs of pop.
file under your favourite pop combo comparison. but homescience are even better than that.
maarten schiethart - penny black