Reality's Coming Through

AMG Review of Reality's Coming Through

Johnny Loftus
All Music Guide

Though they reside on Vagrant and have matured at a rate and in a manner similar to the Get Up Kids, there's something...East Coast about Hot Rod Circuit that cordons them off from the dreaded emo-pop tag. While Reality's Coming Through has its share of pleading choruses and heartstring-tug power-chord changes (and genre spokesman Chris Carrabba guests on the rousing "Unfaithful"), this effort mostly suggests the resigned, flinty ock of Buffalo Tom, or vaguely the later Barlow/Loewenstein axis of Sebadoh. "Fear the Sound"'s wrangled guitars and struggling half-time, "Cheap Trick"'s clever musical references, the achy, pedal steel-tinged "Best You Ever Knew" -- these songs don't deserve to be corralled behind the invisible fence of a meaningless genre. The presence of old-hand East Coast producer Tim O'Heir might have something to do with the blue-gray vibe of Reality's Coming Through, but there's that title, too, which suggests Hot Rod Circuit themselves know this album is the one. It might be the Let Me Come Over of this decade.