Hounds of Mess Around, the latest long player from Oakland’s fusion outfit Idiot Grins, reflects the band’s freewheeling creativity and fearlessness, traits that allow them to explore a delicious variety of flavors – R&B, soul, rock, and alt-country. According to Idiot Grins, “This is our fifth full-length album. We all gave each other COVID during one of the first sessions but managed to recover from that to finish the album in a leisurely twelve months.” Idiot Grins consists of Evan Eustis (bass, mandolin, backing, and lead vocals), Michael Conner (keyboards, strings, clavinet, and synths), John Hansen (lead vocals and backing vocals), Michael Melgoza (drums), and Randy Strauss (guitars). The album embraces 11 tracks, of which, speaking subjectively, the picks of the bunch include “S...