Home Counties

On their highly anticipated debut album ‘Exactly As It Seems’, Home Counties draw on a swathe of broad-ranging influences: early 2000s pop, the “dopamine overload” of Confidence Man’s live shows, to LCD Soundsystem, The Slits, and the nuanced art-rock of ‘Remain In Light’/’Speaking In Tongues’-era Talking Heads.

Produced in its entirety by the band’s guitarist Conor Kearney, and mixed by the renowned Andy Savours (Black Country New Road, Róisín Murphy, The Kills) – the album dutifully captures the band’s rapturous live performances; a fizzing display of eclecticism all with a focus on melody in its purest form.

Thematically, the album traverses the ups and downs of London life in your late twenties; laments on renting and how rubbish landlords are on the Gang of Four/Devo-indebted "You Break It, You Bought It”, turning 25 and not wanting to go clubbing anymore on the agitated indie-disco of “Uptight", and fear of social isolation in old-age on the shapeshifting art-rock of "Wild Guess”.

Home Counties always manage to balance the duality of lyrical frankness and musical buoyancy with gusto. With an eye for the day-to-day, all-too-relatable details of crap modern living, yet – coupled with an ear for hook-filled, grin-inducing melodies – the pay-off is one riddled in joy rather than despair.

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