We all speak in love anyway.
We all want the same thing.
We all stem from the same tree.
The band in rueful tones sings this universal language of love, with a lust chaser. It's a tone of that one lost love that they're trying to get back to. It sounds like they've been looking for a long time.

The 45-minute album is just about the right length for one theme. "Waiting for Departures" sounds a lot like Esperanza, with a high floating repeated phrase, solid drums and a fuzzing, streaking "dull" guitar throughout. You can see images of an American Airlines commercial flicker on the back of your eyelids at certain lullful parts of the song.

It always pays to look at the members of a band last when new music hits your membrane. This threesome look like a slightly cleaned-up Nirvana. An "All Apologies," In Utero acoustic Silly Putty transfer of the seminal '90s confused fucks.

The difference is, Gracer doesn't seem afraid of commerce or commerciality, though their look belies that. (Maybe intentionally and boy aren't I a cynical wanker.) The band does it well. They never hit the cravat and Chardonnay banal. They do flirt with it, at times, as looking across a room at the overly made-up woman nursing the Screwdriver and proclaim with an inner voice, "I'll settle."

But at least they're getting theirs. I'd love to hear this band open up — so I can get mine — and I'll look for their next effort.

By the way, a closer look at the CD cover would have given another clue to the innards of this band and its music. Atop a foreboding building, which appears to be a bottling factory of the early 20th century, is a scrubbed-white square of the outside wall. Inside the cleansed area reads, "HOPE."

Having recovered from expectation, I stop the album about midway through song two and start again.