Homelife - Exotic Interlude [Album]

Humble Soul

September 9, 2009, 04:51 PM

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Not content using customary glowing reviews to sell their release, Homelife instead quote a Japanese visitor to Manchester in 1993: "Your houses, they look like cakes!" What that says about the music is, quite a lot actually. Homelife are a stripped down duo playing and recording all the laid back and off kilter parts. This is a true DIY home-recording crafted over three years with such loving expertise you would never know it. Mixing English alt-folk with Afro, Caribbean and Hawaiian instrumentation may sound like madness but somehow it makes perfect sense.

Often downbeat and sentimental in lyrical content and with lulling music, Richard Hawley is a clear influence: especially with lap steel, acoustic and various other warm hearted and utterly strange stringed instruments laid down to add a balmy, almost kitsch, summer holiday feel (just listen to the Peter Green slide guitar work on the title track). Not all songs are of equal interest but that's the beauty of this dreamy brew, which allows your mind to wander before dragging your attention back with countless sublime interludes. Anton Burnside's intricate portrait of hope and regret, a recurring theme through the album, remains unresolved on the penultimate 'Atlas', which sums up the eternal struggle of those too lazy to achieve immortality today but always promising next time: ("Yesterday dream, Tomorrow new world, I will never be lost").

Holed out in their impeccably tatty and instrument laden Trapdoor studio the pair don't appear obvious contenders to produce the outsider record of the year, and this isn't quite it, but Burnside's wistful vocal combined with musical snippets of faraway lands make for a timeless gem of a record, particularly on the faultless opening tracks ‘Circles’ and ‘Along the Verge’.

Who knew twinning Hawaii with Manchester would have such tasteful results?

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