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Album Review

The worldview of Todd Pipes, who wrote nine of the 12 songs on Deep Blue Sometbing's debut album, Home (the other three had lyrics by his brother Toby), is that of the educated American twenty-something of the 1990s: referencing art objects from the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's to the paintings of Kandinsky, he and his friends suffer the travails of romance, compromise, and suicide while trying to establish themselves as independent adults. Pipes sets these concerns to a power-pop sound straight out of late-'70s/early-'80s Great Britain (in turn indebted to the Brit rock of 1965), perhaps an odd stylistic choice for a band from Denton, TX, but it's a small world after all, and they find enough hooks to offer a literally upbeat contrast to the youthful uncertainty in the lyrics. Ironically, given the defiantly uncommercial stance put forth on the album-closing "Wouldn't Change a Thing," Home, propelled by the Top Ten success of "Breakfast at Tiffany's," became a substantial hit. (Deep Blue Something released an earlier version of Home on RainMaker Records in October 1994. The Interscope version released in June 1995 contained two fewer songs; three songs had been re-recorded; and the remaining songs had been remixed.)