There is a boy out there in the swamps of suburban Florida that your wife will leave you for upon meeting him in a grocery store check out line. This boy happens to be Caleb Groh, the mind behind soon to be Florida favorite, “Happiest Lion.” There is just something about Caleb’s homemade mixes and innocence that shines through in his music. Raw emotion leaks through every pour on this album, although it is not A-grade genius, it is most certainly on its way there.

Coming from a home-schooled family lifestyle Caleb is able to harness certain areas of life that the majority of us public school attendees, are not. The album starts off with a track titled Boy In Soil, immediately this track reveals an obvious influence from the post-rock ambient area, such as Sigur Ros or Mogwai. After about six minutes of noise landscape, you are lead into what seems like a more appropriate opening track titled What You Said. This track is about 40 seconds and is a nice transition to where I personally think the album really begins.

Daffodil Boquet, is delightfully child like from the get go, with the misspelling of bouquet and the thought of summer bike rides. Caleb takes you through what seems to be an awkward first date experience; this song would be generalized to most as, cute. How We Mourned, In the Winter, is another track of what seems to be about lovers, trying to fix their relationship. With mandolin twang, some sort of crazy piano crescendo going on through the majority of the song, and lyrics like “You couldn’t catch a cold dear.” This song is extremely listenable. It sounds quite a bit like singer songwriter Sufjan Stevens or maybe a longer Elliott Smith Ballad. The album continues along the same direction as previous tracks with Fox, You Are All Too Down and There Is Not A Star. However I believe “Homemade” reaches its peak during track seven with Kevin and Brendan Paint an Image of Chicago.

This song should be on the radio, really. When I spoke with Caleb before writing this review, he stated, “ This one sounds like the Postal Service.” Well, it does but it has so much more to it then the majority of Ben Gibbard’s songs. It tells a story of a boy running in a goofy winter style outfit to relieve himself from family stress in a suburban city. He then goes onto discuss a crumbling marriage, accompanied by what appears to be a digital marimba and some sort of sequence synthesizer. This song is haunting with lines like “Mow the grass but the marriage won’t last, and fall asleep in your Sunday best.” Real, raw, and complex yet simple songwriting here people! This song is different from the entire album and that’s why I love this album. People always fall into genres this album could be put into a wide range of lo-fi folk, but instead it pushes more towards experimental. If you take anything from this review at least check out this song it is definitely epiphany worthy.

The album continues on like the beginning more acoustic mandolin jams and ambient beasts. With a couple more highlights Brisk or Biting, How I Go, The Continents it Divides, and Dear Friend, the North Wind. Although this album is not flawless and has its low points and high points, the high are extremely high and the low are still worthy of a look. Overall I would have to say this album is an 8 out 10, for a first attempt at a release. Oh, did I mention it is free download on his myspace! Grab it, Get it, Download it, it’s awesome.

MYSPACE