On the brand new Dwelling Is The place album, The Whaler, there’s a track referred to as “Each Day Feels Like 9/11.” On the day that I converse to vocalist Brandon MacDonald and guitarist Tilley Komorny, the sky throughout the East Coast is yellow with wildfire smoke, and it’s straightforward to know what MacDonald meant by that. It additionally makes the next track, “9:12,” hit even more durable. “And on September twelfth, 2001, everybody went again to work,” are the one lyrics within the observe. Amid local weather disasters, LGBTQ+ persecution, and white supremacist violence, daily, and the one after, holds some type of trauma.
Learn extra: 5 biggest emo songs of all time
The Whaler offers with these emotions via unflinching, unsettling imagery and exorcistic emo-folk—opening the album with the strains, “Kites and intestines tangled in branches / I’m spilling my guts to the gutless”. MacDonald is a poetic lyricist and an intense vocalist, perhaps some of the hanging frontpeople within the indie underground proper now. It’s this that made the band’s 2021 debut I Grew to become Birds an instantaneous emo basic. It unfold quick throughout Twitter upon launch, with followers praising the band’s Elephant 6-indebted sound and MacDonald’s vivid lyrical dissection of gender dysphoria.
The Whaler is darker than that album, musically and lyrically, however there’s nonetheless heat within the band’s fervent fan help. Dwelling Is The place’s motto is “Our band might be your neighborhood.” The group the group is constructing is rising ever extra essential. MacDonald and Komorny are each trans ladies, as are most of the followers that maintain Dwelling Is The place expensive, and within the band’s dwelling state of Florida, anti-trans legal guidelines are quickly being handed. It’s robust to know if there’s an answer, and a sure hopelessness is on the crux of The Whaler. That makes it all of the extra very important to those that present as much as yell alongside on the reveals.
In Alt Press’s dialog with MacDonald and Komorny under, we get to know the band’s origin story, and why they evaluate this brutally despairing album to Seinfeld.
How did you every get into the world of DIY music?
Brandon: I type of fumbled into it. I simply wished to write down songs. Taking part in reveals and getting concerned with individuals was tremendous cool and a complete optimistic, but it surely wasn’t social for me. I simply wished to make artwork, that was the one factor. However the social side of it, I’ve obtained to fulfill individuals I in all probability wouldn’t have in any other case met, and have modified my life in a method or one other.
Tilley: Once I was 15, there wasn’t any all-ages venue in my city. So myself and I believe three different individuals, we obtained collectively a PA and set it up in a headshop referred to as Inexperienced Life, and we began throwing all-ages reveals. It was a very small however actually cool scene of like, emo and post-hardcore type bands in our space. I met a whole lot of actually cool individuals via that, and that’s how I ended up having any purpose to maneuver as much as North Florida. It’s been how I’ve discovered my associates and group for certain.
Whenever you first began, or early within the mission, what was the aim for Dwelling Is The place?
Brandon: I wished it to be one thing for my instant buddy group to have the ability to dance to and scream to and get collectively and hang around to. The entire level of it was simply to attempt to make one thing lovely. And I don’t know the way profitable we’re, however we attempt our greatest to make one thing lovely each time.
Such as you mentioned, you simply wished to make one thing on your instant buddy group. Because it turned out, when I Grew to become Birds got here out, it had a a lot, a lot wider response than that. How did you are taking that?
Brandon: It didn’t really feel actual, and it nonetheless kinda does not really feel actual. It’s in all probability not actual. I imply, I’m eternally grateful for it. It’s nonetheless one thing I’m processing. In web years or music years, it feels prefer it got here out some time in the past, however in all honesty, it’s actually not been that lengthy. And it’s kinda an enormous adjustment, like, with none in-between, going from being a totally native band to having the Washington Publish write a few present you performed. It’s nice in a whole lot of methods, and really, very bizarre in a whole lot of different methods. However I’m grateful for it. I undoubtedly really feel validated for certain. I really feel like if we stopped doing this tomorrow, it was all nice. [But] I suppose I felt that manner earlier than too.
Let’s discuss The Whaler. What was the method of writing it musically?
Tilley: More often than not if we weren’t writing on tour, it was over a Facetime. After which basically me making a demo and bringing it to the band after which all of us work collectively. There was this concept that it might be like a pop file, akin to love Seashore Boys Smile Periods sort stuff. It’s obtained rather a lot occurring, instrumentally and simply thematically.
And as soon as we had been capable of be in a setting just like the studio that we recorded in with Jack Shirley, there have been so many extra sources that had been attainable to us, like shit that we simply merely both a) cannot afford or b) didn’t know we may do. We simply knew the sound and had been like, how does that sound work? And it’s like, oh, you set a tape in a microwave and then you definately like loop it round a hi-hat stand and play it in reverse. Stuff like that. And yeah, we grew to become like Jack’s children, simply enjoying with all of his tambourines and kazoos and shit.
Is there something notably cool you ended up attempting?
Tilley: There’s an avant-jazz noise part on the finish of the primary track. And that guidelines. It’s simply all of the spaghetti thrown on the wall. Simply each concept attainable. And within the recording, we went to — our buddy Joey Tobin was documenting it, and so they introduced a bit area recorder, like an audio recorder. We went to love a smash room and broke a bunch of stuff with hammers and baseball bats and shit, like TVs and dinner plates and bottles and furnishings and issues like that, and recorded all of these sounds. And it was actually enjoyable to place that right into a transition piece, identical to a bit sound piece. That was tremendous enjoyable.
How concerning the lyrical course of?
Brandon: Each track kinda comes from a special place. There’s some songs which might be like frankensteins of various poems, the place I took the strains that stood out and stitched them collectively. After which there’s ones which might be simply written starting to finish with some type of narrative or concept, after which there’s others that simply kinda begin off with a phrase or an concept or an occasion or an individual, and then you definately construct it over time. It’s completely different, trigger for Birds it took me like 9 years to write down the lyrics. And to kinda have had an opportunity to let that go — I felt misplaced for a minute, ‘trigger it’s like seeing your child go off to varsity. It’s like empty nest syndrome.
I used to be attempting to consider the place my head was at on the time, and the place the world was at from my instant perspective, like my intestine response to sure issues. The method that it took or no matter, I don’t wanna repeat it. It obtained to a reasonably darkish place. However within the studio, it’s loopy, as a result of these songs that started off as one thing virtually like… I don’t wanna say I used to be afraid of them or no matter, however they’re simply kinda heavy for me. After which to enter the studio, I had the very best time, like essentially the most enjoyable I believe I’ve ever had, making this file. So I obtained closure with it virtually. ‘Trigger there was like a minute the place I virtually hated it, as a result of it’s popping out of simply – you understand, it’s like discovering a chunk of gold in a pile of manure. However, yeah, recording it, it felt like I used to be free, just like the gates had been opening or one thing.
The album offers with the fixed trauma of the apocalyptic world we stay in. What conclusion do you come to, if any?
Brandon: I’ve seen [in] completely different write-ups and stuff for the file that it’s like life-affirming, or I hold seeing the phrase “catharsis.” And I don’t really feel that in any respect. I don’t really feel like there’s any catharsis. The file actually doesn’t finish, it simply continues to loop and loop and loop till you determine it’s over. A purpose why I’ve such an advanced relationship with this file is as a result of to me, it comes throughout hopeless. Perhaps I’ll have a special interpretation of it over time. But it surely got here from these kinda ideas that you simply don’t imagine however you assume when your fucking again is simply in opposition to the wall. I don’t imply to love, sound like fatalistic or nihilistic or something like that. I’m glad that individuals are getting one thing optimistic out of it once they’re listening to it on the very least. However there’s no message, there’s not like an ethical, I’m not attempting to evangelise something. It’s observational. It’s like Seinfeld. [Laughs]
It’s a very terrifying time to be trans in the US, particularly in Florida. What does it really feel prefer to be in that state proper now, and what’s your relationship with your house state in the intervening time?
Brandon: It seems like 9/11.
Tilley: Brandon moved [away] a short while in the past, and I’ll be shifting quickly. I misplaced my healthcare and issues, which is fairly loopy. And in addition there’s a rest room ban now and shit, and so they’re attempting to go a drag ban just like how they did in Tennessee. I imagine I converse for Brandon on this too, that we each genuinely actually like Florida.
Brandon: Yeah, I like Florida. My coronary heart aches. I want I may stay there nonetheless.
Tilley: Yeah. We’ve obtained a whole lot of actually good associates who’re nonetheless going to be residing right here. And it’s not secure, which is terrible, ‘trigger it’s genuinely essentially the most lovely place on earth that I’ve seen. I used to be up within the northeast not too long ago, I used to be in Boston. And no one appears at you. You’ll be able to simply type of be an individual. I can use the ladies’s restroom. It’s superb. You don’t get that right here. I simply obtained again from Planet Health, and I went in a sports activities bra and obtained a fucking dying stare from all people. That’s not the case somewhere else. You see that and also you’re like, wow, you don’t need to stay in a perpetual hell, which is fairly cool.
