The Hotelier
Home, Like Noplace Is There

Open the curtains. Singing birds tell me "tear the buildings down."

It would all be easier if Christian Holden's lyrics were less personal and less in line with my youth. It would all be easier if, while listening to the new album by the Hotelier, I hadn't realized how similar a remote mountain village like mine could be to a small town in Massachusetts called Worcester.

Christian Holden was born and raised there, just a few miles from Boston. And I can imagine him there, in his room, sitting on a carpet stained with beer and Coca-Cola, writing his songs on the pages of a notebook. A stream of tightly packed words, one after another, to give free rein to all his inner malaise. "Home, Like Noplace Is There" is the second album by the Hotelier, his band, and it's truly an explosion of emotions, words upon words that intertwine, wrap around the hardcore/emo guitars and the scathing melodies. You listen to the nine tracks on the playlist and return to when you were a frustrated and angry kid, trapped in a box and unable to escape.

Now that I'm twenty-seven, things around me have changed, my way of seeing the world has changed. But listening to an album like the Hotelier's reminds me that perhaps, when I was fifteen and angry with the whole world, I wasn't entirely wrong. "Your Deep Rest" forces you to come to terms with the past. In the song, Holden talks about a friend he couldn't help. A friend who hated himself so much that he decided to give up everything, leave a letter to the only person who stood by him, and end it all. These are painful phrases, soaked in regret and fear, alternating with a poignant and powerful hardcore melody.

And it is hardcore/punk/emo that is the fabric on which the lyrics of this precious album are sewn. The beautiful "Among The Wildflowers" is a blatant tribute to Pianos Becomes The Teeth and Touché Amoré, the bands that have most inspired the Hotelier. Sexual confusion is discussed in "Life In Drag", a bone-crushing song that tells the story of a boy struggling for his identity and dignity. And in "Housebroken", Holden compares himself to a dog tied to a short iron chain, forced to pace back and forth in the small backyard without being able to react, without being able to feel free. A desire for freedom, to break the chains and shout one's thoughts to the world. This is the common thread of the nine tracks on the album. Nine tracks that seem like nine stories, nine chapters of a novel. Nine gems that make this Hotelier album one of the most intense and inspired releases this year.

Remember me for me, I need to set my spirit free.

And I, as I sit here cross-legged on the bed writing a review of this album, can't help but return with my memories ten, twelve years ago. I too wanted to spit out my ideas, to show everyone my reasons, my frustrations, and my anger. I too felt like a fish out of water, in a small-minded and mentally stuck-in-the-sixties town. I felt like I wasn't part of the community, feeling that outside that useless town there was something else waiting for me, and perhaps, someone else who would understand and consider me. Christian Holden, with his songs, managed to make himself heard, to give meaning to the stream of emotions that led him to create an album like this.

"Dendron" is the peak of the album, the spectacular demonstration of the Hotelier's skills. An anthem to adolescence, an anthem to those years so strange, so devastating yet so incredibly powerful. A shouted chorus, spat directly from the heart that can only stir emotions.

Perhaps at my age an album like this shouldn't shake me so much. Perhaps at my age, adolescence should only be a nostalgic and distant memory of a fantastic but difficult period. However, "Home, Like Noplace Is There" has the power to attract me like a magnet, to make me feel like a teenager again, and to envy a bit those who are fifteen today. The Hotelier managed to unleash all their power in a sublime, poetic, and amazing album. An album not innovative, not experimental, not complicated but damn sentimental. An album that, within the hardcore punk or emocore or call-it-what-you-want world, manages to make room among the big names. And if the American Football remain the masters of this genre and their (unfortunately) only album remains unparalleled and a point of reference for all other bands, the Hotelier this time have hit the mark and (almost) reached perfection.

Wish I was there to say goodbye when you went away. Wish I was home, oh but noplace was there.