The Home Team are flirting with us. Despite its dark cover art and metal-sounding title, The Crucible Of Life is actually alive with lustful and romantic pop-rock. It’s rather symbolic that the band continue to present their records in such a way. No matter how they continue to develop their own brand of genre-melding music, they keep in touch with their heavy roots. On this third album, the Seattle-based quartet continue to hone their trademark heavy pop sound, which feels like a step up from 2021’s Slow Boom. There’s vibrancy and life at every corner, with colourful horn sections, hip-snaking slap bass, and seductive R&B whispers, all decorated with distorted, crunchy guitar. Love & Co. packages all these best bits in one, and recruits a massiv...