The Daily Spin, December 12
Home | Before the Night
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023.
Each album will be given a rating on a scale from 0 to 10. You can look at the entire set here. Additionally, you can check out a list of my favorite songs from each album right here.
Album: Before the Night (2014)
Artist: HOME
Link:
I heard the opening minute of the first track on this record and actually had to remind myself that I wasn’t watching SummoningSalt - no insane world record breakdowns here, just pleasantly enjoyable synthwave that hits at the core of the genre without ever falling prey to being too horrendously basic.
There’s something calming and pleasant about these simple arrangements - though they never really get too wild and crazy, it’s also pretty clear that they don’t need to in order to make things work. It’s just fun synth play, and though it doesn’t really garner enough energy to engage me over the long run, it doesn’t really have to.
In a twist I didn’t really expect, my least favorite track is the one that sounds the most like it’s straight off the Stardew Valley soundtrack - ‘Nosebleed’, mainly because it feels as though it’s a thematic outlier - without the atmosphere that 8-bit tracks like that usually pair with, there’s nothing to conjure any sort of emotional attachment - something that’s incredibly important for music like this, sound without spoken word.
Rating: 8.2/10
Best Tracks: Above All; Before the Night
Worst Tracks: Nosebleed