Loma Vista
Family of the Year’s story began in 2009, when frontman Joe Keefe assembled a band around an album, Songbook, that he completed while decompressing from a five-year stint with Unbusted, the alt-rock trio he started in Boston with brother Sebastian Keefe, that gained some notoriety for its inclusion on the soundtrack to the Farrelly brothers’ film Stuck On You. Instead of relying on the distortion of his past, suddenly pianos, horns, acoustic guitars, and other assorted instrumentation were being used to display a more sophisticated – yet equally as playful – indie-rock sound that brings to mind classic pop bands like The Smiths, The Byrds, Fleetwood Mac, and The Go-Betweens.