Long Read // No one else quite operates in the visionary realms of Home Counties
No one else quite operates in the visionary realms of Home Counties. An influx of synth tribulations and zesty dance-pop melodic melodramas sees the six-piece lament at crap modern living through the only way: having a blast.
Drawing from the likes of Confidence Man's dopamine-induced live shows, straight-set '2000s pop to the more nuanced art-rock fancies of Talking Heads and Devo thrown in for good measure, Home Counties' Exactly As It Seems has all the magic to firmly establish them as vital cogs in an ever-changing landscape of the weird and wonderful.
Now into the build-up of their debut album - centralised around the ups-and-downs of modern day living - we hopped on a Zoom call to really meld ourselves into the world and lives of Home Counties, pyjamas and all.
Internet connections rectified, introductions made, I began with the all-important question: are you satisfied with how it came out?
Will took the reins on this one: "Yeah, I think so! We recorded the whole album in the evenings after work, where we could get sort of cheap studio time. It wasn't like going to the studio for a couple of weeks and just like getting it all done. It was very much like an omnipresent sort of thing happening throughout our lives, which was tiring in some ways, but also like more rewarding now it's over. It feels a bit weird not to have the album as a thing to worry about. Sending it all to mastering was actually like, "oh shit..it's actually out."
Having already implemented their status with two acclaimed EPs 'Redevelopment' and 'In A Middle English Town,' the group are lining up for a real hook-and-sinker with an album this time around, no less. "We've always done two EPs and I think an early point in writing this album, we thought maybe it was just another EP," vocalist Will recalls. "But then we gradually got more and more songs added on and we could see a more cohesive thing happening."
The band are certainly no strangers to long stints on the road either, playing notable headline shows at venues like The 100 Club and The Lexington already on their roster. After all, there is no rest for the wicked in the world of music - especially when you've got an album to promote. "We were gigging this weekend, like a mini sort of stint and I think that's got us really excited to tour. It felt really weird back at work today, I was like, "Oh God, I should be at a service station somewhere." But yeah it's weird. [...] This little stint was a good opportunity to play the songs we haven't played before live. Now we're in a position where we really know the album and what works live on it. Different changes which we do live on the record which just work for the full band set-up, as opposed to the dance-y production."
As Home Counties clock off at 5 from their work and go about jumping straight on their laptops for some production-time, it's by sheer miracle that up-and-coming bands don't become burnt out altogether. "Little bits that aren't associated with the music I guess," Will chuckles with a shrug. "I think with the album we actually look forward to the evening sessions, it's nice to detach yourself away from work. Especially like, the a lot of songs reflect on like, being this age and doing that. Being like in a shitty admin job - what the fuck's this? It's very reflective, like making music and also living it at the same time. But there are some band bits that are like, this is basically like my office job. Like booking Travel Lodges." The work-life balance is never easy to perfect but it appears that Will and co have found the secret formula for it.
Barn throws his insight on the topic: "Try and weave into the pub whenever you can, kind of makes it less like work. More motivation!
"Especially on this album, it's aesthetically work-forward album. The front covers a spreadsheet, the songs are all about spreadsheets and tax-paying. It's like living in your accommodation, falling apart, you get home from work and there's a hole in your ceiling. We'll probably make an album different way next time, because it takes too fucking long. But there's definitely a cohesive to it, when it's made around work."
With the album dipping in to so many influences, I just had to ask what act or individual drew them in the most. Naturally, they kept it to the dance-floor: "Confidence Man were quite a big one! Especially the way we were writing this one, it was more production writing. It wasn't sat in the practice room coming up with songs, it was like.. sat around a laptop. It was very much making like a sort of really shit house song and then chipping away at it until it becomes Home Counties. It was more a dance-y way of writing. On this album, we thought let's do as much as that as want."
This freedom of expression is found a-plenty across the album. The flamenco-endorsed Wild Guess or the fast electronic spark of Funk U Up come to mind. There's moments of sheer indulgence in here, there's also moments of utter madness, too. Let loose by the cravings of new-wave electronic oddities, it's an album eager to please; but equally eager to keep you on your toes.
With the introduction of female vocalist of Lois Kelly to the fold from first single Bethnal Green last year, it evidently sees the band takes its biggest departure for this album,. compared to those before it. "Yeah, so we went to school with Lois and she's sang with us before, non-Home Counties, rather informally," Will remembers. "Then living in London and sort of hanging out with Lois. She sang on Bethnal Green and then we're like "oh shit, this'll be a vibe. So we asked her to join and then two weeks later we went out on tour."
"Will ventures, "Her vocal line that you'd never come up with. Especially with me as a limited range whereas Lois would just come up with insane harmonious and unexpected melodies that you wouldn't normally associate with the music we'd make. It really exploded the confines of what Home Counties was before." Main synth lead Barn quips in, "It just made us in general, inclined to be more experimental. It kind of just opened sonic avenues in many different ways." Adding new textures to an already-formulated group can often give you bucketloads of sonic creativity and Lois with Home Counties was certainly no different. You can see perhaps see this most on the agitated indie-disco Uptight strain on the fruitless endeavours of nights out, as the pair weave in and out of one another, "It's only fucking midnight, only selling Bud Light. So I'm on the bus home / I resist the pressure, not losing my tether."
City life isn't all that cracked up to be and the lyrical frankness on fizzy art-bop You Break It, You Bought It paints this best, as it plays on the bands' past experiences with dodgy landlords: "Just kind of post-uni - living in terrible housing really. Lived in Bristol for a few years, crazy terrible landlords turning up in the middle of the night trying to fix things that they're not really qualified to fix. We've got a hole in the roof in our house right now, which was reported like two weeks ago. Yeah, it's all falling apart," Will motions with a flick of his hand. The dismay of rental life is not lost on us. Especially not for the dissatisfied youth of today - and that is who the band hopes to connect with most when it comes to this album.
Fed up, isolated and getting stitched up for money, work-forward, youth-focused Exactly As It Seems is the dancing tribulations behind a puckered smile. Wryly upbeat throughout, it jibes a finger at the state of it all.
With such flamboyance interspersed sonically, their visuals had to equally be on point. Fortunately, that wasn't a let down either.
"We came up with this spreadsheet idea that's kind of been warped and distorted, been like dragged apart from itself," Will recalls. "We pitched that to Cameron and he made it really cool. He withdrew it in a sort of animated style. We're really happy with it." Adapted from the six-minute closer, Posthumous Spreadsheets, comprises of whirring industrial noises and stirring lyrics from wordsmith Will as he prods and jabs at himself perhaps at how unrelenting their moaning comes to be: "I start to feel this ain't a chorus at all / Just a melodramatic trail of thought / But in the end, if you don't stop me ... I could, I could go on."
With test pressings finalised and tour dates booked, Home Counties are intent on making their claim into the writhing world of post-punk electronica. There is no better promise in delivery than on their initiation here.
I left the boys on one last question to mull over. Did you see yourself where you are now 10 years ago?
"Yeah, so I think we're probably exactly where we are now," Will wonders. "I think the tours, I had never envisaged myself going on big stints for tours. Like shows that sell out. Or having vinyls. Having something you can hold in your hands that you can say, "we made this together, as like friends."
"I also never thought that me and Bill would be in Home Counties," Barn continues. "He's the bassist and we went to uni together. It always seemed like an inevitably we end up in Home Counties but to have it actually happened is a bit unexpected. 10 years in the making."
The bands' adoration for Dot to Dot has never wavered since formerly living in Bristol and so return dates to the city festival complete a full tour roster, including Kendall Calling in August.
17 May - The Great Escape, Brighton
18 May - Get Together Festival, Sheffield
22 May - Oslo, London
25 May - Dot 2 Dot, Bristol
26 May - Dot 2 Dot, Nottingham
28 Jul - Deer Shed Festival
Feature by Alex Curle
