More than twenty years after the American tragedy that was 9/11, its echos continue to ripple across American culture. But no band has captured the post-9/11 world in the same way as Brandon MacDonald’s Home is Where. Their Summer 2023 release, “The Whaler”, is their crushing comeback from the already emo classic debut, “I Became Birds”. Her distinct screaming vocals cut through the cluttered but necessary instrumentals to reach directly into your soul.
The album ranges from the energetic highs like “yes! yes! a thousand times yes!” to the somber low reached in “9/12”, having only one line, “In dawn, September 12, 2001, everyone went back to work.” MacDonald’s vocals aren’t the only striking part of the ensemble, Tilley Komorny’s twinkly guitar lifts up the heavy vocals and provides a freshness in the bleakness of the lyrics. She also contributes kaleidoscopic texture through her various other parts, which her credits list as “piano, organ, backing vox, banjo, tambourine, jingle bells, mandolin fingers, tape loops, breaking stuff.”
MacDonald isn’t credited as the lead vocalist, but rather as a “tantrum” which accurately describes the purgative nature of this album. Her lyricism leaves you feeling raw, with her uncomfortable imagery sewn together to form lines like “spitting teeth into each other’s mouths back and forth until we make a smile” and “we don a regalia of useless genitalia.” This amalgam of bleak emo catharsis makes Home is Where’s first full length studio album, a bewitching sequel to “I Became Birds.”