When I think of the music of Peter Sagar, better known as HOMESHAKE, I think of glittering electronic production, with sultry and quiet tones interwoven like the fine threads of an expensive shirt. And while there’s usually a faint air of melancholy, the overarching feelings have always been of cozy, albeit complacent peace.
So from the opening moments of CD Wallet, the first proper HOMESHAKE album since 2021’s Under the Weather!, I was taken aback. Here are emo guitar riffs, massive, noisy instrumentals, crooning, desperate vocals singing plain words of desolate isolation. It’s raw. It’s stripped back. It’s a shoegaze album with a HOMESHAKE twist, bringing an emphasis on guitars and a more straightforward sound not heard since 2017’s Fresh Air.
Thematically, CD Wallet is an exploration of a deep, deep depression. Whether it’s the cold comforts of isolation on “Basement” or the sensation of drowning in your own mind on “Smoke,” this album offers a cutting, uncomfortably intimate look at a much more vulnerable HOMESHAKE than we’re used to hearing.
The final track, “Listerine,” deserves special mention as the emotional crux of CD Wallet. Beginning with a slow, lumbering jam, it breaks off after a few minutes, leaving us with ringing feedback until it explodes into a secret track (a HOMESHAKE album staple), with doomy, grungy rhythm guitar, vocals on the edge of breakdown, and that same feedback, like a nagging voice in your ear crawling from a whisper to a scream.
If you also feel that you revert when you visit home like you’re that same sad high schooler despairing in your childhood bedroom, you’ll immediately identify with this album. Like lying in bed for hours on your worst day, CD Wallet hurts like you wouldn’t believe, but you can’t bring yourself to stop.
