Review Summary: Suicide, depression, trying to cure yourself through medication, gender identity issues, self hate, and rebuilding yourself.
Have you ever found an album at the exact perfect time and then it becomes one of your very favorites? Well, this isn't a story like that, but it's close. I happened into, Home Like No Place Is There when going through a not so difficult time in my life, but this album touched me deeply to my core. From the struggles with suicide, medicating depression, grief, and gender identity issues. As well as your typical sad boy type stuff typically found in albums like this. It all just clicked so well with me, fast forward a few years later and I have all but forgotten about it, combing through my music library I see the album and press play.
For narrative driven purposes I must explain, someone I recently loved committed suicide, and that has a great deal with why I chose to write this review. While, yes, I love this album. Much of my enjoyment lately has a lot to do with the album feeling like it is speaking directly to me, telling me I am not alone. So, now that that is out of the way. How does the album sound? Putting the lyrics to the side...
That's where this album probably gets a lot of dislike from people who don't usually like this type of music, let's start with the vocals. They're VERY and I mean VERY emotive...now you may be asking yourself, what's wrong with sounding emotional? Isn't all music emotional? Yes, but this guy to put it more bluntly sounds like he's on the verge of crying through most of the album. I hate to use the phrase "overly emotional" but yeah. He is definitely that.
Sometimes the band sounds like a ***tier version of bands like La Dispute, Brand New, or even American Football and Mineral. Which is NOT to say any of those bands are bad, on the contrary, all those bands kick ass. The problem with The Hotelier is that they ARE their influences, without their influences they really wouldn't be a band. So, I guess what I'm saying is if the lyrics weren't so damn good. Would anyone talk about this album? I guess the answer is....maybe? So I suppose we must ask ourselves.....
What genre is The Hotelier? What do they sound like? In order to classify The Hotelier, we must use the ever elusive and confusing genre tag of Indie Rock. Now, what does that tell us? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. So, here's a better one. The Hotelier sounds like they listened to a bunch of 90's emo bands like Mineral, Sunny Day Real Estate, Knapsack, etc. Then moved onto some more contemporary groups such as the aforementioned, Brand New and La Dispute. Maybe some Third Eye Blind? With those skipping guitar licks. Definitely.
So if The Hotelier isn't really anything special at all, why do people love this album so much? Well, what the album does, it does REALLY REALLY well. (Unlike the follow up which was more mellow than a bunch of sleeping pills that were forced to listen Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine records on repeat...) It's an emotional whirlwind of angst and self-reflection, in a sense, it's coming out of the rubble that has collapsed onto of you have learned that nothing is permanent and everything eventually burns away.
Is that sentiment worth powering through the more forgettable aspects of this album? Yes. Is this a perfect album? *** NO! Is it a flawed masterpiece? Yes. It is.
4 of 5
Pros: Lyrics and overall themes presented are very cathartic and beautiful. It is also very short.
Cons: Unoriginal instrumentation, overly emotional vocals, and an extremely pretensions vocal clip used to segue into another song is very off-putting and makes me wanna throw up.
Overall flawed but still very good.
