Since 2017, Home is Where has been making cathartic, eclectic and intense music. The emo band from Palm Coast, Florida pulls from a variety of influences, including post-hardcore, Midwest emo and country.
Home is Where’s songs feature vocal screams from the incredibly talented Bea MacDonald and noisy guitar hooks from Tilley Komorny. A groovy rhythm section consisting of Connor “Fat Slaps” O’Brien on bass and Josiah Gardella on drums rounds out their unique, genre-bending sound.
The band has become underground music darlings, appearing on many end-of-the-year lists, beginning with their 2021 debut “I Became Birds.” It has continued to gain appreciation among fans with its 2023 album, “The Whaler.”
After discovering “The Whaler,” and subsequently their entire discography, Home is Where instantly became one of my favorite bands and has continued to be a touchstone of emotion when I feel depressed or disconnected from the world.
The band’s songs deal directly with themes of isolation, depression and the desperate desire to connect with others in an increasingly alienated world. They accomplish this with catchy hooks and sing-along choruses straight out of Bob Dylan’s electric era. Layered into that sound is the noisy dissonance of legends of the 90’s post-hardcore scene such as Unwound and Cap’n Jazz.
This mix is on constant display with “The Whaler.” On the visceral track “Everyday Feels Like 9/11,” MacDonald alternates between a piercing howl and edge-of-her-range, sustained notes. This creates a blended slurry of ballad and noise track.
The harsh guitars and pulsing drums drive the listener into a frenzy mirroring the anxiety and desperation of the lyrics. MacDonald shifts between scathing political commentary and individualized fears with lines like, “every day feels like 9/11/we’re never gettin’ to heaven/this counterfeit reality, a perfect copy of a forgery/ & after all these years I still look a lot like me.”
The album presents a Groundhog Day situation, with its narrator trapped in a loop of their experiences on and after the events of September 11, 2001. Her life cycles through the same high-strung horror with no release.
These breakdowns in the larger socio-political world are mirrored by individual breakdowns represented in brilliant surreal imagery by MacDonald. This is the case with “Floral Organs,” where the narrator sees “red tide skyline/every whale in the sea washes up to my feet fully flensed & barely breathing.”
These images never stop. They are an essential part of the world Home is Where is crafting, evoking the feeling of the daily trauma of living as a marginalized person in America.
To this point, MacDonald and Komorny are both transgender artists. The hellish world portrayed on this album testifies to their agony of growing up in a country that refuses to accept and is actively working to eliminate their existence.
Home is Where’s surrealist body horror is grounded in the cruel reality our country daily inflicts on the queer people who live here. The beauty of their music is found in the midst of all this agony and alienation.
Despite all these alienating forces in America, they are creating powerful music that is a testament to their beauty and humanity.
In their own description of the album the band writes, “While ‘The Whaler’ paints a bleak picture of a world in an endless state of collapse–of ruined utopias and desperate people faking normalcy–there’s a humanity-affirming undercurrent throughout that screams to break free.” This is where I find so much joy in Home is Where’s work.
I often find myself struggling with disassociating from the horrors of the world. It seems easier to ignore the problems and just stick my head in the sand.
Home is Where reality-checks that notion, reminding me that ignoring injustice is a privileged position not afforded to queer folks. Knowing this, if I am not active and loud in my hatred of the structures that demonize my queer friends, then I am aiding those structures.
Home is Where has something for everyone– catharsis, groovy and loud music, voices by and for the marginalized, and even Dylan-esque harmonicas. “The Whaler” can be streamed on iTunes, Spotify, and Home is Where’s Bandcamp page.
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Samuel Shepley is currently a junior at the University of Belmont. He is double majoring in English and Faith and Social Justice.
