Homesick

The Big Exercise, the second album by Dutch band The Homesick, and their first for Sub Pop, finds the group keenly second-guessing their core chemistry as a live unit, imbuing their angular post-punk workouts with baroque elements such as piano, acoustic guitar, percussion, and even clarinet. It's the opposite of trying to translate recorded music to the stage, guitarist Elias Elgersma comments. We were already playing these songs live for quite some time, so for this album, we wanted to unlock the potential of these songs further in the studio. The Homesick has made a record impregnated with impressions that still fit neatly under the pop umbrella. The album title's nod to Scott Walker - the big exercise is a phrase pulled from a passage in Walker's biography, Deep Shade of Blue - isn't an aberration either: straddling pop sonority and the cacophonous fringes is something well worth aspiring.