Home Is Where’s last record, the whaler, was a memorable iteration on 1990s emo touchstones with enough personality to stand on its own. Their live shows are the best way to get to know them, full of heart and joy. They completely won me over at last year’s Best Friends Forever festival. Blending a high-energy, second-wave emo sound with the oddball storytelling and conceptually driven lyrics of bands like the Decemberists and Neutral Milk Hotel, Home Is Where have found a steadily growing audience who eagerly await the next chapter.
If there’s one thing they’ve demonstrated in their brief tenure, it’s that they continually refine their sound to achieve mostly strong returns, and hunting season is no exception on either front. It’s an exciting and enjoyable record that weaves alt-country touches into a concept album about (no kidding) a group of 13 Elvis impersonators dying in a 13-car pileup, with each song allegedly detailing their final thoughts. Home Is Where put all their cards on the table right away. “reptile house” sets the stage for the remainder of the record, with delicate guitars skittering over mid-1990s Jade Tree or Deep Elm drums.
The second track, “migration patterns”, cracks this new sound wide open, featuring slide guitar, harmonica, and a joyous vocal from MacDonald. Her “woos” and yelps do what the best records in the genre do. They take the pain, isolation, and frustration, ball them up, then throw them in the air so the audience can scream along and get it all out.
Despite the concept communicated in press materials, it’s not necessary to hang on every word. The passionate vocals of Bea MacDonald convey everything, but if you’re looking for proof, “artificial grass” at least plays along: “Twenty thousand car crashes happen every day / Or at least one every six minutes / And that was me once.” That song is one of the early highlights, building on the best elements of their previous record and taking them a little higher. The same goes for “bike week”, another anthemic track with big hooks and big guitars. Centerpiece, “everyone won the lotto”, is a pretty, languid ballad with darkly humorous lyrics.
If there is one knock on the record, it is that the second half of the record sounds a little same-y, but it all goes down easy. These are the tracks with some of the best lyrics, so that provides another compelling reason to keep listening. “milk & diesel”, with its frozen bottles of trucker’s piss and bags of McDonald’s along the side of the freeway, cuts close to the postcards of southern decay effortlessly written by Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman.
However, the band save one of the very best songs until almost last. “roll tide” is a ten-minute epic that builds to a beautiful swirl of noise, sounding almost as if Animal Collective made an emo song. And “drive-by mooning” returns us to where we began, with a concise, catchy final statement: “Home is where forever and ever”, and it makes one hope this is the case.
With a restless creative energy and a touch of classic sounds, this type of group warrants continual interest. Hunting Season provides catharsis through embracing touchstone emo sounds and blending in generous helpings of folk and country. It may not be a warm hug, but it’s an excellent soundtrack for beers on the back porch with your best friends on a perfect summer night.
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