“In a sense we’re like, ‘We make hardly anything like that anymore.’ We play Weathered and [An Ode to the] Nite Ratz [Club] and Vacancy and Title Track from that record live, but there’s so many songs on it that I think are really goofy,” says frontman and main songwriter Christian Holden. “I wrote them when I was 18, in high school still. At the same time, people seem to really like listening to It Never Goes Out with the context of Home Like Noplace Is There. Pitchfork gave it a 7.7, which is really high for an album that I wrote when I was 18 and in high school and says the line, ‘Punk rock saved my fucking life,’ on the record. I don’t necessarily care to distance myself from it. I just think it’s goofy.”
In contrast to Holden’s ‘goofy’ appraisal, Home Like Noplace Is There is teeming with adult themes – covering self-destructive behaviour, death, addiction, and betrayal. 20 months down the line from its release, Holden harbours no regrets about how the album turned out.
“I think it did what I wanted it to do – people were able to get it in the way that I wanted people to get it,” he says. “I’m very happy with how that record came out and the reception. I think we want to try to do something a little bit different with every single album, as probably most bands do. [We want to] develop our songwriting around this specific sad pop style and the sort of narrative between albums. We’re going to continue to develop it, hopefully.”
It’s interesting to hear Holden describe the band’s sound as sad pop. In contrast, the Pitchfork review of Home Like Noplace Is There (which gave it a rating of 8.2) called The Hotelier “punk as fuck.” However, more than anything else, critics have tagged them an emo band. The arrangements on Home Like Noplace Is There cohere with a recognised emo rock sound, but the most emotive element is undeniably Holden’s lyrics and vocals.
“I think almost that entire album must have been written instrumentally first and then lyrically later,” he says. “But as a person, I talk a lot and I like to fully develop an idea in a way that pop song structure doesn’t really allow me to. So we maybe don’t repeat choruses because I want to continue to talk about this same idea throughout the song.”
The Hotelier recently finished recording their third album, which is due in autumn 2016. Holden and co. mightn’t be the biggest band in the world, but Home was definitely a major breakthrough. Approaching album three, Holden sought to ascertain what gave the previous LP such widespread appeal.
“I was listening to that album a lot thinking, ‘What makes this album Hotelier? What are people going to be looking for?’ At a certain point I had to stop. When we were writing Home Like Noplace Is There, I was listening to the bands that were in our scene and I was like, ‘What makes this stuff click with people?’ At a certain point I was like, ‘OK I have to stop comparing this record to anything and I just have to write it.’ So for a year I didn’t really listen to anything. And then now, instead of comparing it to other bands in our scene, I just had to stop comparing [the new album] to Home Like Noplace Is There and I had to just be like, ‘This is not going to be Home Like Noplace Is There II. It’s going to be its own unique piece’.”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
