The Big Exercise (LP)

If their debut 'Youth Hunt' marked The Homesick's tryst with faith and pastoral life, the band's upcoming second album The Big Exercise brings them to more grounded, tangible pastures. With its title ripped from a passage in the Scott Walker-biography Deep Shade Of Blue, the record is a concentrated effort by Jaap van der Velde, Erik Woudwijk and Elias Elgersma to explore the physicality of their music in fresh ways.

The headstrong wanderlust of The Big Exercise is very fitting, given The Homesick's exodus as a small-town Dutch band ready to trot the world. Contrary to Youth Hunt's quest for belonging, roots, and provenance, however, the band's creative trajectory is now dictated by a sense of otherness and imagination. The sharp contrasts are nevertheless ever-present; the music's new sonorous depth is underpinned by wry meditations on family ties, alternate realities, and commonplace encounters.

With aplomb, The Homesick made a record impregnated with impressions which, when superimposed, still fit neatly under the pop umbrella. That obvious nod to Scott Walker isn't an aberration either: straddling pop sonority and the cacophonous fringes is something well worth aspiring.