Garden Home – Garden Home | Album Review
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Thumbs Up Records
Somewhere between Chicago, Illinois, and the Twin Cities of Minnesota lies Milwaukee. It’s an hour and some change between Madison and Lambeau Field, aka the Two State Capitals of Wisconsin. Situated on the gorgeous shore of Lake Michigan, perhaps unassumingly, Milwaukee is a small-market city with some big bragging rights, namely Giannis Antetokounmpo, Miller High Life, and four-piece post-hardcore screamo project Garden Home.
After several years of impatient waiting, the band has graciously delivered their self-titled debut album to fans and followers alike. Preceded by two incredible EPs from 2019 and 2021, the anticipation surrounding Garden Home’s LP has been steadily growing - and MAN, was it worth the wait. The quartet’s first release, Disposable, introduced their sound with full force, a perfect five-song articulation of their post-hardcore sound and emotionally gritty lyricism. The band’s second EP, Postmortem, further developed their craft and includes a nod to a fantasy every Midwesterner has considered at some point – driving your car into Lake Michigan.
If you’re no stranger to these shores, you already know Garden Home is not for the weak of heart, though they produce music for the weak-hearted. Thematically, their lyrics steer directly into the hopelessness of being alive, and their self-titled record is no different. Garden Home keeps this promise alive by giving us emotionally depressed types a glimmer of hope across eight beautiful tracks and twenty-three glorious minutes. The album is truly the gift we Milwaukeeans have all been waiting for – and if you’re new here, welcome to the 414. We’re thrilled to have you.
The album wastes absolutely no time delving right into the hard shit. “Right by Me” opens the proceedings up with immediate candor and vulnerability as vocalist Dylan Mazurkiewicz speaks about the chaos of personal weakness. Within seconds, we’re treated to the full Garden Home experience, a true display of the band’s exemplary musicianship and songwriting right off the cuff. They inundate us with the thematic concept of the album - to be human is to know love, hate, unbridled rage, and the depths of emotion. This brutal honesty is emblematic of companionship, its upswings and downfalls, and everything in between. The lyrics foster this connection with metaphors of daggers and compasses – a hand and an object acting together as one, for better or for worse. This idea remains constant throughout every song, yet it never becomes stale and never grows tiresome. Garden Home capture humanity in a flawless and sprawling way, showing that we can feel the same hundred emotions in one million completely different ways. For at least half of them, there is something on this album to be your anthem.
Remember when I said earlier that Garden Home isn’t for the weak of heart? Remember when I said they waste absolutely no time getting right to the point? The perfect example of this exists on track three, “Grim,” which delivers infectious drums, a haunting riff, and the promise of a looming reaper that will carry you through the afterlife. There’s a simultaneous comfort and agony in the inevitability of grief and loss. You can feel the unfairness, the rage, the reckoning within the track. The lyrics provide comfort that pairs with this questioning of the afterlife, displaying death as a familiar friend while still wondering where it will take us. Images of nature and wind ground us in the Earthly realm and the comforting notion that our deceased loved ones stay present through the joy of those surrounding us.
What got me wasn’t just the song itself but the band’s decision to close the track with a snippet of a voicemail. Anyone who has lost a loved one can confirm that there is a perpetual desperation to hear their voice again. When my father passed in 2017, I called his phone every day just to hear his voicemail prompting me to leave a message. I’d pretend he was teaching a class or on the golf course, anything to hold off on the reality that he was gone. I called every day until the phone company disconnected his number. The agony is in remembering that painful detail of my life, but the comfort is knowing that there is something I can turn to every time I feel it creeping up again.
The three singles released from the album, “Not Today,” “Past Life,” and “The Worst of It,” each have been garnering high praise and feeding into the brimming anticipation for the album’s arrival. The trio of songs chosen to represent the band’s debut could not have been more perfectly articulate. “Not Today” is an ode to regretfulness, a screaming apology for being unworthy of someone who deserves more than what you can offer. “Past Life” promises forgiveness for a past self who neglected to live to their potential and succumbed to their own sadness. It pleads that this life, though futile at times, is worth living and there’s always something to stay alive for. “The Worst of It” is a narration of that life, about witnessing a world that unravels around you and the growing impulse to give up - yet to feel such pain is to experience the willingness to persist through it. Together, the singles spin the hopeless and simultaneously sanguine tale of life. The darkness gives way to light, and it's worth it to kick and scream and fight your way through to it.
Through these singles, Garden Home created an extraordinary momentum without giving too much away, and the reception has been awe-inspiring. These songs provoke such vulnerability, toying with the darkness of human emotion while still remaining encouraging and uplifting by promoting love, kindness, growth, and healing at the core - and everyone feels like that? It’s not just me grappling with my own struggles of my past, present, and future… and it’s not just you, either. Garden Home have single-handedly bridged the gap between this mentality that you’re alone in what you feel, at a time where everything can feel so damn isolating and so fucking unfair. The album is a call for community and friendship, reflecting what the MKE scene is all about.
Milwaukee is often referred to (quite unlovingly) as a Chicago Suburb. In recent years, however, the Southeastern Wisconsin city has witnessed a renaissance of sorts regarding the arts and music scene. There are street festivals that feature local creatives of every kind in all seasons, notably Summer Soulstice and Locust Street Festival as summertime staples and Mittenfest as a beloved winter Bay View tradition. Shows with all-local band bills are selling out on random weekdays, with no presales, and all walk-ups.
Garden Home’s self-titled has earned its flowers amidst its home-grown accomplishments. This record is a labor of love from the band members themselves, to the album art, to the label, to the production, extending all the way to the fans who make up the hometown scene. The band itself is made up of some supremely talented and experienced individuals - this isn’t anyone’s first rodeo. They’re releasing this debut on local MKE label Thumbs Up Records, which boasts bands from Milwaukee, the Midwest, and beyond. Cody Ratley produced the album and is no stranger to the Milwaukee scene. Other local contributors include Justin Perkins of Mystery Room Mastering, with local artist Lee Behm and photographer Samer Ghani handling the album art. The release show is taking place on April 19th at Cactus Club, a massively renowned community arts hub that has its own growing list of positive impacts upon the city. Garden Home is a project with such deep roots in the MKE scene, and the efforts will never go unnoticed. This is all to say that every single person involved in the creation of this album has added to the city's inspiring legacy. If you’ve been sleeping on the Good Land, Garden Home came to wake you up with a shoulder to cry on, and it bears repeating - Welcome to Milwaukee, we’ve been waiting for you.
Sofie Green is an average music enjoyer from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She is your biggest fan (and she cried while she wrote this). Find her relentlessly hyping her favorite DIY bands from the Midwest and beyond at @smallsofie on Instagram and @s_ofs_ on Twitter.
