Big Exercise

2020 release. 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. Its 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 titles nod to Scott Walker - the big exercise is a phrase pulled from a passage in Walkers biography, Deep Shade of Blue - isnt an aberration either: straddling pop sonority and the cacophonous fringes is something well worth aspiring.