Home Counties - Exactly As It Seems Review
Home Counties' latest release tackles urban struggles with explosive post-pop energy and relatable wit.
Home Counties take on the mantle of resistance against landlords, gentrification, and dead-end spreadsheets in their new electric summertime release, and we’re all the luckier for it. A new and improved explosive post pop sound that their listeners have been longing to hear. The band is a push past Paramore in a sunshiny look upon London life. Bursting with electrodes and incendiary guitar, killer drums and a wicked hot synth: this album is for people that get out of the house. Emanating a noise that doesn’t care what you think of it, this album is seeped in a glorious combination of both punk and pop-funk: it feels as though it’s music made by Home Counties for Home Counties - luckily for them they have the same taste in music as their audience.
Their opener, Uptight, is an encapsulation of all that is described above, crashing us down to the sounds of guitar whipping and lyrics chanting about that all too familiar feeling of a gig not being quite what was necessary to champion on the night, resulting in the inevitable melancholy, FOMO, and the debate about whether or not you’re too old or too uptight for it anymore. Sometimes, as the song continues to state, staying out to midnight is more than enough. Home Counties embody all of this with their backing track becoming bedlam the longer it continues, descending in hectic twirls of synths paired with a guitar playing itself down its neck.
Their following track, Bethnal Green, continues and expands the relatable yet dreamy quality through witty lyrics and space agey instrumental sound, without losing the homey London feel their vocals provide. Anyone that’s walked through a gentrified area and noticed a distinct lacking in depth that comes in tow with yuppie culture and their endless quest to push East London into Kent and not stop ‘till every pint is a tenner’ will sympathize with this piece. Much in the same way as gentrification, the keyboard playing over this track resonating with the cheery vocals cover up the song’s more downhearted lyrical content, diverting from it’s true meaning.
To choose a standout from this release would be a hard task for any fan of Home Counties. That being said, Wild Guess, with its slow Bossa Nova and initially warm tempo exploding into a dance around of astral twangs and neon-y sing song would be a personal favourite. Something that isn’t said about nearly enough albums, but by all means should be true of almost all of them, is that it’s clear from the vocalising and righteous harmonising: Home Counties had fun making this; that feeling of joy is passed onto the listener throughout in undeniable catchy deliveries.
However, whilst of course the previously mentioned ‘standout’ was from the selection of this album, this track deserves a catagory of it’s own: Posthumous Spreadsheets. In the sense that it is almost unilaterally agreed that Venus in Furs from The Velvet Underground’s self-titled album takes their work from genius to timeless, I would say that the space between this track and the rest of the album is the same in depth. Beginning in a hypnotic state of sways and shifting, the song transforms within itself to a theme of losing touch and dropping into fast madness. Relatable once again through exposure to the misery and meaningless of the average middle management lifestyle, earning a little money to get by but waiting out your days until all that’s left of you are your posthumous spreadsheets, this piece is a ballad for the worn-down and overworked. It’s that sinking feeling within anyone that works a 9-5 that most of the days are distinguishable only by the quantity of Excel within them that comes out in true and full force within this final song, and it’s both the fuel and the oven of this album. If Home Counties are able to maintain the level of excellence that was produced in this track alone, there’s no reason anyone should turn away from any of their next work to come.