Florida band Home Is Where, recently released their Jack Shirley produced album the whaler, (Joyce Manor, Deafheaven) . The Palm Coast, FL-based band’s album captures the desensitization and disorientation of tragedy becoming mundane. Frontwoman Brandon MacDonald (vocals, multi-instrumentalist) explains the album’s centerpiece, “everyday feels like 9/11,” serves not only as the emotional nucleus of the album, but also as its setting: 9/11/2001. “I still feel like we’re living in the fallout of that day,” she says. “It’s a significant symbol for the collapse of everything. It was really successful in destroying America as an idea. Before, you could argue that there was an American Dream. But now, look at what that utopia has become.”

‘the whaler’ marks an unmistakable new chapter for MacDonald’s songwriting, subverting the expectations left by her band’ debut LP ‘I Became Birds’ for something equally resonant, but darker and more expansive. While ‘the whaler’ paints a bleak picture of a world in an endless state of collapse–of ruined utopias and desperate people faking normalcy–there’s a humanity-affirming undercurrent throughout that screams to break free. The band features Brandon MacDonald (vocals, multi-instrumentalist), Tilley Komorny (guitar, vocals), Connor O’Brien (bass), and Josiah Gardella (drums)

“The idea for the record came to me in the spring of 2021 when I realized I wasn’t doing too hot mentally, and had a nervous breakdown,” MacDonald explains. “A lot of it is a very negative record, which was scary to write because I was being honest with myself and allowing a lot of fucked up thoughts to be in the songs. I was more vulnerable than I was used to being in art.” Moments in MacDonald’s own life had caused her to question reality, and reading Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation helped her name these emotions. “In that book, he wrote ‘We live in a world where there is more and more information and less and less meaning,’ and that idea really went into a lot of the songs on the record,” she says. Read more about the album here: https://chromaticpr.com/home-is-where

With ‘the whaler,’ the Florida band have accomplished a timeless album that’s both lucid and human: a testament to centering yourself and those around you when meaning is lost, and the world burns.

Order the whaler by Home Is Where HERE