When you walk alone, you’re never lost. At least, that’s the operating prin… Read Full Bio ↴When you walk alone, you’re never lost. At least, that’s the operating principle behind Homeshake, the recording project of Peter Sagar. Over his first three albums, Sagar followed his own idiosyncratic vision, a journey that’s taken him from sturdy guitar-based indie-pop to, on 2017’s Fresh Air, a bleary-eyed take on lo-fi R&B. Now, with Helium, Sagar is putting down roots in aesthetic territory all his own. Landscape that he once viewed from a distance now forms the bedrock of his sound, and from here, he looks back out at the world as if through a light fog, composing songs that feel grounded and intimate, even as they explore a dispersed feeling of isolation.
It’s a feeling that comes through not only in the gauziness of the production, but also in the vulnerability of the songs themselves. Sagar began writing Helium shortly after completing Fresh Air, and in the middle of what he calls a “binge” reading of Haruki Murakami. It’s not hard to picture the narrator of these songs as a distinctly Murakamian character: He moves through time by himself, bemused by and insulated from a world he doesn’t quite seem to have been made for. Everyone Sagar encounters here — including himself — seems to be a step removed from present reality, whether by technology (“Anything At All”), solitude (“Just Like My”), or sweet fantasy (“Like Mariah”). The record is stitched together by a series of instrumental interludes, synthesizer explorations whose haziness adds to the suspicion that this is all an uncanny dream.
Which isn’t to say that Sagar is unmoored in his own world. In fact, much of Helium is the result of what he calls “a much clearer mental state” than the one he’d experienced shortly following Fresh Air’s completion. “I had a better idea of the sound that was working for this record and what it was turning into as I was writing the songs,” he says. That’s owing in part to the album’s genesis. Where his previous three records were recorded directly to one-inch tape in a local studio, Helium was recorded and mixed by Sagar alone in his apartment in Montreal’s Little Italy neighborhood between April and June of this year. Freed of the rigid editing process he’d endured before, he was able to lose himself in pursuit of tone and texture. “I didn’t have to book time, compete for good hours, wait on availability. I did a lot of it at home in the middle of the night,” he says. “It made me get more obsessive about details.”
A budding interest in ambient and experimental music — particularly Visible Cloaks, DJ Rashad, and Jlin — pushed him to tinker with the micro-sounds that surround the songs here. It’s a process he found creatively invigorating; even the tinkling boom-bap of Young Thug informs “All Night Long.” It’s a far cry from the chorus-laden guitars of his earlier work. “Ever since I started introducing synthesizers into my music, I’ve gotten more interested in texture,” he says. “I’d hit a creative dead end [with guitars], so synths took over.” The warm chords of a Roland Juno 60 form the album’s base, and gave him a clean palette with which to work. “No tape hiss, no humming power outlets and shitty mixing boards,” as he puts it. “Everything just came out nice and pure.”
Still, for all the growth it demonstrates and the ways it luxuriates in its discoveries, Helium is at its core a record that isn’t beholden to any particular set of sounds, textures, or instruments to get its point across. In that sense, it feels closer to the bone, at once assured of its vision and remarkably vulnerable. It’s perhaps our purest view yet of Homeshake’s home country.
It’s a feeling that comes through not only in the gauziness of the production, but also in the vulnerability of the songs themselves. Sagar began writing Helium shortly after completing Fresh Air, and in the middle of what he calls a “binge” reading of Haruki Murakami. It’s not hard to picture the narrator of these songs as a distinctly Murakamian character: He moves through time by himself, bemused by and insulated from a world he doesn’t quite seem to have been made for. Everyone Sagar encounters here — including himself — seems to be a step removed from present reality, whether by technology (“Anything At All”), solitude (“Just Like My”), or sweet fantasy (“Like Mariah”). The record is stitched together by a series of instrumental interludes, synthesizer explorations whose haziness adds to the suspicion that this is all an uncanny dream.
Which isn’t to say that Sagar is unmoored in his own world. In fact, much of Helium is the result of what he calls “a much clearer mental state” than the one he’d experienced shortly following Fresh Air’s completion. “I had a better idea of the sound that was working for this record and what it was turning into as I was writing the songs,” he says. That’s owing in part to the album’s genesis. Where his previous three records were recorded directly to one-inch tape in a local studio, Helium was recorded and mixed by Sagar alone in his apartment in Montreal’s Little Italy neighborhood between April and June of this year. Freed of the rigid editing process he’d endured before, he was able to lose himself in pursuit of tone and texture. “I didn’t have to book time, compete for good hours, wait on availability. I did a lot of it at home in the middle of the night,” he says. “It made me get more obsessive about details.”
A budding interest in ambient and experimental music — particularly Visible Cloaks, DJ Rashad, and Jlin — pushed him to tinker with the micro-sounds that surround the songs here. It’s a process he found creatively invigorating; even the tinkling boom-bap of Young Thug informs “All Night Long.” It’s a far cry from the chorus-laden guitars of his earlier work. “Ever since I started introducing synthesizers into my music, I’ve gotten more interested in texture,” he says. “I’d hit a creative dead end [with guitars], so synths took over.” The warm chords of a Roland Juno 60 form the album’s base, and gave him a clean palette with which to work. “No tape hiss, no humming power outlets and shitty mixing boards,” as he puts it. “Everything just came out nice and pure.”
Still, for all the growth it demonstrates and the ways it luxuriates in its discoveries, Helium is at its core a record that isn’t beholden to any particular set of sounds, textures, or instruments to get its point across. In that sense, it feels closer to the bone, at once assured of its vision and remarkably vulnerable. It’s perhaps our purest view yet of Homeshake’s home country.
(Secret Track)
HOMESHAKE Lyrics
If I gotta be
Awake at night
Can I skip the heat?
A couple lights
That'll let me see
Anything that I might need
Roll it up a bit
But keep it light
Got my little tune
I do alright
Well, I wonder if
Anything that lets me sleep
Is gonna make its way to me
And it's still 4 o'clock in the morning
And I still don't feel like I can put my head back down
Breathe in
Breathe out
That's better
Now close your eyes
Yeah
You're gettin' the hang of it
Breathe in
Close your eyes
Breathe in
Close your eyes
Fall asleep
Fall asleep
Fall asleep
Fall asleep
Fall asleep
Fall asleep
Fall asleep
Awake at night
Can I skip the heat?
A couple lights
That'll let me see
Anything that I might need
Roll it up a bit
But keep it light
Got my little tune
Well, I wonder if
Anything that lets me sleep
Is gonna make its way to me
And it's still 4 o'clock in the morning
And I still don't feel like I can put my head back down
Breathe in
Breathe out
That's better
Now close your eyes
Yeah
You're gettin' the hang of it
Breathe in
Close your eyes
Breathe in
Close your eyes
Fall asleep
Fall asleep
Fall asleep
Fall asleep
Fall asleep
Fall asleep
Fall asleep
Lyrics © SC PUBLISHING DBA SECRETLY CANADIAN PUB.
Written by: Peter J Sagar
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
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TheSilversony
If you are too lazy to click on the description, as I am
track one . Hello Welcome (00:00)
track two . Call Me Up (01:04)
track three . Not U (03:32)
track four . Every Single Thing (06:19)
track five . Wrapping Up (08:55)
track six . Getting Down Pt. II (He's Cooling Down) (12:42)
track seven . Timing (14:45)
track eight . TV Volume (18:20)
track nine . Khmlwugh (21:17)
track ten . Fresh Air (24:52)
track eleven . Serious (30:59)
track twelve . So She (33:59)
track thirteen . This Way (37:26)
track fourteen . Signing Off
Artur Coelho Mendes
I put this to play while I took a hot shower. Suddenly, I could relax to the max, forget about everything that didn't belong to my internal world. I felt happy. I was sober, but not feeling like that.
это дрюс
what a hell! i'm alredy going to took hot shower and chose that video!
Haywood U. Cuddleme
Who could have guessed that hipster music needed a serious RnB/funky injection? Homeshake is the wave of the future, this album is fucking gold.
Duncan McManus
@Greatest Ally Israel Man this album is way sicker than Midnight Snack. In the Shower is super timeless but Fresh Air is legit an unskippable album for 99% of it.
Greatest Ally Israel
Haha aren't you a little sensitive there? There are still some good songs on here just not feeling it as much as midnight snack or in the shower
Greatest Ally Israel
No, this is a step down from his earlier stuff.
Tineke Knol
this album's got those kinda songs that you wanna sing along to the first time you listen, even though you don't know the lyrics yet
Karlīna Jansone
this is so sexy that it is probably banned in Saudi Arabia and Texas
xx x
666like
Moe
Big Saudi Homeshake fan here wuddup