#12 - The Hotelier - Home, Like Noplace is There

The Hotelier - Home, Like Noplace is There

Tiny Engines, 2014

The Emo Revival was big for me. Here we had a slew of bands making these big, sweeping songs, putting it all out there, and surpassing all of their heroes on the way up. Well, at least that’s what the Hotelier did with Home, Like Noplace is There. What makes this album so great is that it works an insane alchemy to sustains as perpetually fraught emotional state without ever letting up with enough variance to never wear you out. I listened to this album all through the summer of 2014 running on the poorly maintained walking path that circled our townhome community. I was not built for running, and after that summer I messed up my hamstring so bad I still have to stretch it for 5 minutes every morning, but running (read: jogging, poorly) to The Hotelier is one of my favorite memories from our time there trying to figure out what we were going to do. Their follow-up--2016’s Goodness--is a damn fine record, but I always felt like it was missing the extra gear that made Home, Like Noplace is There so special. This is one of those rare albums that demands to be listened to front-to-back each time out. Most of the songs can stand just fine on their own (“The Scope and All this Rebuilding,” “Your Deep Rest,” and “Housebroken” were all contenders on my favorite songs of the decade list), but they work so much better when listened to all together. 

Gut Feeling: The Hotelier - Home, Like Noplace is There

The Hotelier – Home, Like Noplace Is There

Tiny Engines, 2014

There isn’t enough space on my iPhone for too much music. Frankly, there are too many pictures of my baby, and even though I deleted the blurry ones, there are photos and videos I just can’t bring myself to get rid of even though they’ve been transferred to both my computer and iCloud. For six months, one album has avoided being cut from the 10 or 15 I keep on my phone. Usually, album’s cycle out as I absorb them and review them, but the Hotelier’s Home, Like Noplace Is There gets a stay of deletion. And really, it’s not even close. I haven’t written about this album even though I listen to it at least once a week. It’s one of my favorite albums of the year, and one reason for that is the fact that I haven’t been able to distill this album’s essence into words. It’s full of big, sweeping, grandiose, emotionally intense, heartbreaking, and deeply satisfying songs that resonate on a wave of emotional honesty that I require from any record I’m going to spend a significant amount of time with.

Home, Like Noplace Is There is absolutely relentless. If you’re not getting pummeled by Christian Holden’s devastating vocal performance, you are certainly being pummeled by the big, building guitars weaving some of the most satisfying and moody work the new emo revival has to offer. That, or the perfectly placed whoa-OH-ohs, the beautiful balance of incredible intensity and deathly quiet and the way both of which seem equally capable of shattering your heart. As lovely as this album often is, full of gorgeous melodies and passion, the songs are packed with ugly truths being stared straight in the face. Addiction, death, betrayal, all the heavy stuff heaped over some of the rawest, most compelling music I’ve heard all year. Maybe I’m biased (I did grow up on Brand New and this is hitting those exact same buttons and then some) with my penchant for artists who overshare and songs told in dog metaphors (“Housebroken”), but either way the chest-clearing, catharsis incarnate tone of Home, Like Noplace Is There is something to be heralded.

You can listen to (and acquire) the album in its entirety at Bandcamp, which I recommend as this is a real, proper capital-A Album to be experienced in its sequenced entirety.

"The Scope and All of This Rebuilding"

"Discomfort Revisited"