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.

Anything at All
Homeshake Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

Everyone I know
Lives in my cellphone
No matter where I go
Moving a lost soul

I should probably put this down
I don't need a thing right now
Tell me that I'm not allowed

Pull me out this goddamn crowd
Find us something else to do
Anything, just me and you
Anything at all

I got these dollars
Shirt got no collar
Don't own no Prada
Shouldn't have bothered

I should probably put this down
I don't need a thing right now
Tell me that I'm not allowed
Pull me out this goddamn crowd
Find us something else to do

Anything, just me and you
Anything at all

Overall Meaning

The song "Anything at All" by HOMESHAKE paints a picture of a society that is overly reliant on technology and feels disconnected from meaningful social interactions. The opening lines "Everyone I know/Lives in my cellphone" is a commentary on how people often define their social lives by their interactions through their phones rather than the people they actually see in person. The singer laments feeling like a "lost soul" who is always on the move but never really going anywhere.

The chorus of the song expresses a desire to break free from this digital dependency and find something more meaningful to do. The line "Tell me that I'm not allowed/Pull me out this goddamn crowd" appears to be a cry for help, asking for someone to rescue the singer from the numbness of their digital life. The song challenges the listener to reflect on their own relationship with technology and ask whether it is truly fulfilling, or whether they too are simply stuck in a virtual "crowd."

Overall, "Anything at All" is a thought-provoking song that invites listeners to reexamine their relationship with technology and the impact it has on their social lives.

Line by Line Meaning

Everyone I know
All of my acquaintances

Lives in my cellphone
Are mostly reachable via my mobile device

No matter where I go
Regardless of my current physical location

Moving a lost soul
Attempting to find direction in life

I should probably put this down
I probably shouldn't have picked up my phone

I don't need a thing right now
I am content with my current situation

Tell me that I'm not allowed
Inform me that I shouldn't do something

Pull me out this goddamn crowd
Remove me from this annoying group of people

Find us something else to do
Come up with a different activity for us to engage in

Anything, just me and you
No preference, as long as it's just us two hanging out

I got these dollars
I possess some money