ONE OF THE BEST ALBUMS OF THE 2010s: Home, like Noplace Is There by the Hotelier
WHERE IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN RANKED ON THE LIST: #16, between SUSTO and Okkervil River
This all-timer of an album did not make the Best Of list because I had not listened to it before last New Year's Eve. Can you blame me? I shouldn't be held responsible for every fucking emo album that crosses my desk. Sure, Goodness is pretty great (its title undersells itself, I guess). That album's "Two Deliverances" made the Honorable Mentions list for Songs of the Decade (and the all-caps description possibly hints that I had just recently uncovered Home, or was about to). But nothing of what I knew about this band or this genre prepared me for this album.
If I had Spotify, then their year's end summary for me would've indicated that Home, like Noplace Is There was my most-listened-to album this year. I have no doubts about this. If I'm being honest with myself, the average of my full listens of this album was closer to 1/day than I am comfortable with.
This shouldn't be an indication that it is an "easy" album to listen to, or rather, wouldn't be for a normal human being. Let's put it this (possibly apocryphal) way—I have a family friend who has a cousin who I'd see a few times a year whenever this family friend's family would host a BBQ, I'm talking Memorial Day and the like. And I haven't seen this chick in years, but I remember she always wore some kind of hat, or sometimes a wig. I remember my parents explaining to me that she had a behavioral tic that caused her to habitually pull the hairs out of her own head, for whatever reason. In the years since, I feel like I've come to the uncomfortable realization that I understand why she did that. Sometimes I pull the hairs out of my own head, or beard, and I keep doing it because the slight pain feels good, in a perverted sense. Like the pain wakes me up. This is some pussy-shit version of the cutting of wrists, I think. Same idea, just on a way smaller scale.
Anyways, I feel like I get the same sensation when I listen to Home, like Noplace Is There. Hearing the towering chords and pounding drums mixed with the end-of-life-desperation cracked-voice insanity of Christian Holden's vocals is pretty close to the feeling I get when I pluck a hair. It's not enjoyable, per se, but something about the small pang of pain is addictive. Now that I think about it, isn't this the general theory behind acupuncture? Okay, then call Hotelier's sophomore album musical acupuncture.
It's crazy, because this isn't even one of those albums that I can, like, personally relate to. You know if that were the case, then that would absolutely be something I'd be scrawling all over this fucking blog. That's how I've always been. I'd be writing 6000 words about how I too felt responsible for a friend's suicide, and how the Hotelier managed to capture that niche feeling as I stood by the casket. That's... no, that's not something I've felt. And yet feel these goosebumps anyway, when I hear: "I CALLED IN SICK, FROM YOUR FUNERAL."
It should be even more impressive, that a band had to work even harder, to get me to feel so deeply an emotion I've never actually felt in real life. It's easy to convince me of musical greatness when you're speaking my language. It's more difficult to cut me so acutely when you're not connecting with me on a literal level. Home, like Noplace Is There manages to do that, and then some.
I've said this too many times this year and elsewhere on the blog, but it remains a truism worth repeating: there is a reason that "emo" is the name of this genre. The cream of the crop of emo really are supposed to affect you emotionally. There has been no album this year, point blank, that affected me more emotionally than this superb album from the Hotelier.
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