After teasing the audience and testing the water with some of the most gorgeous and deftly written songs to come out of the alt-folk realm I have heard in a long time, Oaken Lee now delivers a full album under the excellent title of Home (is a folk-rock mixtape).
So, although I am already familiar with the infectious yet understated island vibe and lush groove of “A Mountain (an Echo),” the gorgeous nostalgia of “One Summer Gone,” and the gentle but undeniable revolutionary spirit of “Where Now?”, Home… feels like a collection of songs, any one of which could have been released as a single in its own right.
“Pick a Dead Celebrity” captures those first steps into the big, wide world we take as we leave home and embrace adulthood. “Christopher Street” is spacious and chiming, the story edgy and intriguing, and “Longest Way (to Say Goodbye) is hazy and floating.
However, this is more than just a collection of songs; it’s a musical journey. I know that phrase is bandied about both pointlessly and endlessly, but here it is true. This is a song cycle charting the leaving of the home you spent your childhood in to the finding of that place and that person that you want to build your new adult home around, ironically looking to create, or at least remake, the very thing that you ran away from in your younger days.
Not a concept album, but rather an album of concepts, this gentle and often sonically genteel song arc is an extraordinary blend of analog folk traditions and digital beats, personal sentiments, and recognizable, relatable stories.
This is everything that the folk genre needs right now.
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