Home – IX – Review

Home

IX (Relativity)
by Joshua Brown

After years of playing sparse shows and releasing self-produced 2 and 4 track cassettes on their own Screw Music Forever with negligible promotion, the general public can finally hear Tampa, Florida’s best kept secret. Each successive Home release has had a Roman numeral as its title, so IX is their ninth. Although they’ve graduated to 8-track recording, the songs for IX were laid down in a Florida mobile home, so what we have is a very painterly, rough but obsessive piece of work that’s bursting at the seams with creativity. Every glitch is deliberate. There’s even a foldout insert that contains an art piece to represent and explain each individual song.

One could categorize Home from the type of bands they’ve toured with – Sebadoh, Yo La Tengo, and Thinking Fellers Union Local 282. Although they share something in common with each (especially the experimental nature of Thinking Fellers and the cult-like lo-fi tape trading circuit surrounding Sebadoh), Home will always stand on their own as a genre unto themselves. Partly because of their use of organs and other keyboards, Home’s bio and many journalists like to compare this to everything from Brian Eno to Elton John. I say just listen to IX, because it’s an art-rock masterpiece, and no comparison can do it justice.