I don’t know how to succinctly describe this new Harold Nono album. It’s fairly accessible at times, but also has lots of strange little musical and production touches throughout. Let’s try this: Did you ever have one of those dreams where you encounter all kinds of unrelated people from throughout your life…your fourth grade teacher, the bartender at your favorite local, former US President Jimmy Carter, your college art history professor, and Clint Ruin? It makes no sense, but at the same time there’s a certain logic to it while you’re in the middle of it. That’s kind of how listening to “We’re Almost Home” felt to me. It’s described as experimental pop music, but really there are so many elements on this album I’m not sure that’s a sufficient description. Sure, there are some slightly off-kilter pop moments but you also get more, including movie soundtrack-like soundscapes, free jazz, industrial, noise, and what could have been some incidental music on the “Twin Peaks” soundtrack (“The Fall Reprise”). And I thought of Clint Ruin earlier because I swear I heard brief production elements that reminded me of Scraping Foetus Off the Wheel in “The Shout,” “The Gurney Trips,” and even in the twisted circus music of “Annie & Bunny Got Fast-tracked.”
Musical references aside, I got to the song “Ron’s Mental Leap Coach” about two-thirds of the way into this album and it suddenly hit me that I had slowly, without realizing, been pulled into some sort of dream state by the music, where all these unconnected elements lulled me into their nonsensical logic. It was blissful, and I didn’t want it to end. Alas, final song “Annie’s Phantom Life Raft Choir” brought me back (home?), with its bed of static covered with its somewhere-in-between-ambient-and-dramatic synth chords.
This album was my introduction to Bearskin Records and, if first impressions are important, I look forward to a long friendship.