Review Summary: I mean, I can take a stab at it, but...
Not to psychoanalyze right off the bat, but the title of Vacant Home’s latest LP underlies more than a few identity crises looming over the Perth-based hardcore quintet as they aspire to larger stages.
Can You Show Me Who I Am? is their first album since the departure of founding vocalist Callum McGivern in 2019, their first substantial offering since their breakneck 2017 record
Reflect, Respond, and their first effort bearing a significant audio glow-up thanks to regionally hot-and-getting-hotter engineer/producer Cody Brooks. Rebuilding from the ground up with a new vocalist, (Ben Ferguson), new bassist (James Langlands), and an additional guitarist (James Kilian), the five-piece overhauled themselves through the first half of the decade, and their modest return here reflects both their considerable potential and the “big fish, small pond” syndrome they can’t help but seem to drag around with them.
But first, the positives: Ferguson is plenty capable of carrying Vacant Home’s vocal duties, imbuing each rumination on time and self-worth with the melodramatic urgency and crackling ferocity of melodic hardcore’s finest voices. He may not be the most multi-faceted storyteller, but the nuances of his delivery march in lockstep with the band’s ebb and flow, feeling out the precise intensity required from each section’s relative push and pull. The instrumentation wrangles your attention quickly, too: the opening trio of tracks, “Flaws,” “Thoughts We Can’t Reclaim,” and “Between Branches and a Dying Sun” provide an especially feisty and sometimes blackened overview of the group’s go-to traits, marked by dissonant rhythm guitar, ethereal backing leads, and Dejon Vlahov’s spiffy, pummeling drum work. Late-album changeup “Lilac Reflection” highlights the band’s more sentimental side, and at their most ambitious, the climaxes of “The Only Place I Felt Fine Was With You” and “You’ll Find Yourself in Someone Else” verge on space- and/or post-rock grandiosity, tones embodying the cosmic void that metastasizes after a worthwhile session of vulnerable soul-searching. The leap in production quality from the band’s early work is undeniable. At 34 minutes and change,
Can You Show Me Who I Am? is also a concise enough portion of blunt-edged self-loathing to satisfy the snacking needs of any hardcore addict’s musical diet.
But ay, there’s the rub: in melodic sensibility as well as lyrical depth, Vacant Home have yet to develop a stickier attention to detail or wield the songwriting finesse that could separate wheat from hi-fi heartbreak chaff. Guitar lines seemingly evaporate into ambience before they can bolster any attempt at a hook. Jeremy Street’s clean vocal breaks sound amateurish and uncommitted to pitch or presence. The band’s most finely tuned works all arrive early, and the album’s back half is burdened by two ambient-coded interludes and a relative sense of lethargy. Before then, you’ll have ample opportunity to nod along, feel the beat as it sways and the anguish as it splays, but once the band’s time is up, can you recall
any of their lines? Hum
any of their passages? The musical ecosystem is as competitive now as it’s ever been, and a strong first impression can get listeners in the door, but it can’t distract them from the diminishing returns.
“
We are no strangers to struggle... / ...never wanting to be outdone / Stay now, and watch us grow,” Ferguson hollers on “Weathered,” tightly giving voice to the band’s frustrating start-and-stop existence to this point. I’m glad he still has faith their best days may be yet to come—I’d certainly welcome a sharper, more distinct Vacant Home in the years ahead—but that’s a future they’ll have to show us when the time comes. For now, their resolve can only be taken at face value, and beautification only propels an act so far. If that wasn’t the answer they wanted to hear, they probably shouldn’t have asked.
