Spectreview: Home Is Where – I Became Birds

Released: March 5, 2020

Emo
(Midwest Emo)
(Post-Hardcore)

-OLIVE-

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“Somebody is going to find
What you decide
To leave behind.”

Humid and vexed, midwest emo has an unmistakable mood that’s allowed it to endure where a ton of other rock genres have recently dipped in relevance. “Midwest” juvenescence, after all, endures in kind. Save the climate, nothing ever changes about the subdued lands of small-town America, and the lawnmowers, mall parks and pastures that comprise it will never not serve as its metaphysical trail markers.

There’s been some fantastic midwest emo released over the last few years (Wednesday and Young Jesus immediately spring to my mind), and on the strength of their new record, Palm Coast band Home Is Where are helping to lead the charge into this new one. Short, surreal and irresistibly bittersweet, I Became Birds does an excellent job at capturing the paradox of ennui and exhilaration that cul-de-sac living engenders. Frontperson Brandon MacDonald plays the representative malcontent, riffing off of Jeff Mangum’s idiosyncrasies with lyrics that merge the lysergic with the mundane, as if they were a stand-in for any teen drawn to psychedelics out of sheer boredom. The words don’t make concrete sense, but they don’t need to because they’re delivered with the passion and sincerity of an epiphany. When moments of clarity do emerge, like on the climax of “Assisted Harikiri,” their poignancy is all the more powerful.

The band follows their suit across a record that’s designed around the power of inertia. Opener “L. Ron Hubbard Was Way Cool,” with its slow strums and dirgeful drums, isn’t immediately compelling, but it provides the sodden ground upon which the album ascends. “Long Distance Conjoined Twins,” in comparison, feels like an emo standard in how its two chords bounce between each other, the harmonica at the end punctuating the portrait. “Sewn Together From The Membrane of the Great Sea Cucumber” fluctuates between two temperatures, one searing with unfiltered sunlight and the other cooled under the shade of Christina Patterson’s mournful violin and MacDonald’s singing saw.

What ultimately gives the album an edge, besides the band’s accomplished playing and MacDonald’s feverish presence, is its sequencing. Each song enters and immediately supplants the one before it, from the bipolarity of “Cucumber” to the alarm bells of “The Scientific Classification of Stingrays” to the climactic rush of “Assisted Harikiri” right into the measured conclusion of “The Old Country.” Though it’s not necessary, I recommend listening to this one as a complete piece and experiencing how expertly the band paces the material, pressing on the gas pedal until they’re barreling down I-95 like a bullet without a target.

As a sonic diorama of small-town iconography stretched to fantastical proportions, I Became Birds is a cumulative success and an excellent showing for a band deserving of a wider audience.

Recommended for helping the cows back up.