For a couple of increasingly middling in age men, Michael S Ryan and Bruce Gillis sure seem in tune with their inner teen. Following their last release, Again, where they showcased the more expansive acoustic sound on past favourites; the Town Heroes return home in more ways than one.
Home is a tale of teen love and line in small-town Nova Scotia, told from three points of view over an eventful summer. It’s a coming-of-age story told against the backdrop of Cape Breton in the ’90s; the tale of a young man who discovers love, experienced through a lens of bittersweet nostalgia.
Even upon a casual listening, the musical shift back to the rock stylings the band has been known to partake in is clear. What shines through most though is the subject matter and very flowing narrative.
“I wanted to make an album that paid tribute to small-town Cape Breton in the summer,” explains The Town Heroes’ Mike Ryan. “It was such a magical time when your tiny, quiet hometown was suddenly overflowing with new people, energy and endless possibilities. I couldn’t have written these songs earlier in my life, because it takes a certain amount of time to pass to be able to look back upon those years with the proper lens of nostalgia.”
From open to close, the lyrics paint a perfectly imperfect portrait of puberty-powered years gone by. The timeless aspects of many of the rights of passage and challenges of these times echo through as well with very few aspects actually dating the album.
Home has a very linear story to tell. Beginning with a somewhat chill lead in celebrating the joys and hopefulness of a fleeting adolescent east coast summer; “soaking my bones in the ocean today, fix me up for 51 one weeks away” before kicking seamlessly into what I’ll call the pre-drink/first drinking party anthem that is “1999.” It kicks with naïve ill-intent and a few nicely snuck in snarky wisdom hindsight has provided.
“Walk” arrives next with a brash and boozy bravado likely stemming from the event of the previous song. According to Ryan, it’s where our young protagonist met his match; “After successfully securing alcohol — 4 liters of Tropikiwi cooler — from a town legend named Chi Chi, the boy is drunk for the first time in his life. En route to the dance, he walks along a path where the old railway tracks used to run into Inverness. In his mind, every good thing he’s ever imagined is at the tip of his fingers.”
“Queen” and “Fuse” both head toward the more amorous urges that abound in these instances, with “The Jam” middling them as an instrumental interlude that builds anticipation.
“Queen” sees our boozed-up would-be hero capitalizing on the swagger he’s earned (with great assistance from Chi Chi) before “Fuse” dives into “the initial stages of falling for someone; when new love is written all over your face and, in your mind, will last forever.”
The final three efforts are much more sensitive in tone and complete the sadly familiar cycle most romances during this timeframe succumb to; building desire for connection, separation for some reason or another (the return to the object of affection’s home town in this particular example) and eventual despair as those strong feelings are not matched.
An especially poignant sense of the value of perspective is given after your first listen to the album. “White Knuckled” seems a romantic decrying of the tragic distance between two lovers until album finale “Bruce Lee” pours forth with anguish upon the passive rejection of those advances.
Despite the lack of a fairy-tale ending to the story, Home succeeds in capturing a very specific time in The Town Heroes own and anyone else’s life—if you remember that the dancing pop can in the “Queen” video could be purchased at the It Store, I’m talking to you. However, the album never gets too reference-heavy to become inaccessible. The sentiments found in the lyrics are as relevant today just as much as they were the years before this fella arrived at whatever questionable degree of manhood we reach in this period.
With musical accompaniment as driving and intense as the urges and emotions of your teen years, The Town Heroes have crafted an album that fully encompasses the absurd highs, lows, fun, and delusions of a defining time in all of our lives.