Two influences that should never really ever mix: Hot Water Music and nü-screamo.

Signal Home's A Fragile Constitutional is pretty punk in that sense -- they disregard that idea completely.

What you might call 'diversity,' I call 'bad chemistry.' One of the first bands signed to Hawthorne Heights frontman J.T. Woodruff's label, Carbon Copy Media (reportedly named as a potential self-jabbing), would make a lot of sense on tour alongside say, the Blackout Pact or even Riverboat Gamblers -- if they would just refrain from their cuts to bad sing/scream territory.

An awful flip-flop occurs for the first few songs. The title track opens things promisingly enough, a nice, fun little romp of its own. Yet the very next offering, "Two to Romance (A Story to Guide You Home)," starts off with a ridiculously lame, adolescent scream, the song often coming off like something off Emanuel's last album (or even the band their label boss screeches for). But then, there's an occasional, very slight hint of Jawbreaker in the guitars of the reflective "A History of Choices: What We've Become," and that's hard not to love. I'll be nicely conspicuous at best: The chorus in "The Churches," which is next, is downright awfully similar to Taking Back Sunday's "You're So Last Summer." Other songs ("It's Time to Let a Good Thing Finally Last," "Nail Your Colors to the Mast") pull the inevitable act of ruining a pretty okayish pop-punk song with hideous screams, even when said song leans slightly more to the 'punk' side.

I think you get the point here. Signal Home are 4 kids stuck somewhere between the array of punk rock acts circa early 1990s through the early 2000s they could be drawing from more often and the weak set of derivative crap offered the last several years. No question, it's possible to perform both these things admirably and terribly, respectively and otherwise -- but together, doing them pretty decently just doesn't make for cohesive songs or albums.

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A Fragile Constitutional