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Jan 14, 2020 By Christopher Roberts The Homesick

Dutch trio The Homesick are releasing a new album, The Big Exercise, on February 7 via Sub Pop, the band’s first for the Seattle label. Now they have shared another song from the album, “Male Bonding,” via a strange Karlos Rene Ayala-directed animated video for it. Watch it below, followed by the band’s upcoming tour dates.

When The Big Exercise was announced the band shared a new song from it, “I Celebrate My Fantasy,” which was one of our Songs of the Week. Then they shared another song from the album, “Kaïn,” which was also one of our Songs of the Week.

The band’s lineup is Jaap van der Velde, Erik Woudwijk, and Elias Elgersma. The Big Exercise is the band’s second album, the follow-up to 2017’s debut, Youth Hunt. The album’s title is inspired by a passage in the Scott Walker-biography Deep Shade of Blue.

In a previous press release Van der Velde had this to say about some of the musical influences on the album: “When we were on tour in 2018, I bought Meredith Monk’s Dolmen Music in Switzerland. Elias and I have been completely immersed in her music ever since. But also the work of Joan La Barbara for example, who also did things with extended vocal techniques, that was also quite vital to us. We discovered that the human voice offers so many beautiful elements that can still feel very physical and intrusive.”

Summing up the album, Van der Velde said: “That’s also a phenomenal aspect of the position we’re now in as a band. I consider The Homesick a pop band first and foremost. If you’d introduce a late-era Scott Walker-record to a layman, it would likely fall on flat ears. But put it in the right scene of a good movie, and that person may finally understand its potential. The Homesick is allowed to play around in that pop framework, and the goal is to explore what’s possible within it. You can do super radical and weird things, and at the same time convey it all as straightforward pop music. With this album, I hope people will hear things anew after multiple listens.”

The Homesick Tour Dates:

Jan. 17 - Groningen, NL - Eurosonic Festival (Werkman Stadslyceum)
Feb. 21 - Groningen, NL - Vera
Feb. 28 - Nijmegen, NL - Merleyn
Mar. 05 - Amsterdam, NL - Paradiso
Mar. 06 - Rotterdam, NL - WORM
Mar. 07 - Utrecht, NL - EKKO

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