Adventures – Supersonic Home | Album Retrospective
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Run For Cover Records
Supersonic Home, the first and only album by Pittsburgh rock band Adventures, turns ten years old today. I’ll admit part of me feels silly even sitting down to write about this record because its appeal feels entirely self-evident. It’s hard to imagine someone putting this album on in 2025 and not immediately getting swept up in its brightly colored pop-punk grandeur. Because of that, if I can get even one or two people to hit play on this record, then I’ll have done my job.
In many ways, this is perfect rock music and an unbeatable arc for a band to have: a couple EPs, a couple splits, one full-length, and then calling it a day to let that body of work speak for itself. Granted, the members of Adventures have since found more success in other projects, which makes their discography a bit of a time capsule, but I suppose that self-contained nature is at least some of the appeal.
Just to set the table, Adventures were a five-piece rock band from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The project began with three members of metalcore act Code Orange who obviously wanted to make slightly softer, more straight-ahead rock music. Due to the sizable overlap in members, Adventures is sometimes viewed as an offshoot of Code Orange, but other than the occasional shout here and there, it’s near impossible to hear any connection between the two.
Despite the disparity in genres, it makes total sense to look back and see how Adventures spawned. Initially known as “Code Orange Kids” before shortening to just “Code Orange” in 2014, the members of Code Orange had been (perhaps unwittingly) thrust into the northeast scene. Even though they were making spine-crushing metallic hardcore, they also put out music on Topshelf Records and (somewhat famously) shared a four-way split with Tigers Jaw, The World Is a Beautiful Place, and Self Defense Family. This adjacency to “scene” music placed them within reach of labels like No Sleep and Run For Cover, two titans of the 2010 indie-emo sphere who wound up helping Adventures release their music.
The band’s early EPs, 2012’s Adventures and 2013’s Clear My Head With You, were centered around moody melodies and Reba Meyers’ despondent wail. The lyrics were surprisingly emo, expressing feelings of inadequacy and adolescent frustration. Occasionally, things would peak in a scream or a slow-bobbing breakdown, but for the most part, these were very emotional and overwrought songs, slathered in a solid layer or two of grungy distortion.
By 2014, Adventures were moving a bit more strategically, shifting labels, partnering with peers, and staking out a sound right at the peak of the “soft grunge” explosion. At the beginning of the year, a split with Run Forever marked the group’s final output on No Sleep. By October, a split between Adventures and Pity Sex instantly solidified the group as part of Run For Cover’s Shoegaze Canon, something I could really only place in retrospect.
In February of 2015, Adventures released Supersonic Home onto the world, offering a ten-track exploration of the interpersonal that still sounds as fresh today as it did ten years ago. When I was still a dumbass 21-year-old emo (as opposed to a dumbass 31-year-old emo), the band that Adventures reminded me of most was Tigers Jaw, specifically any key-board-heavy song where Brianna would take lead vocals. Today, I hear a lot more second-wave emo in these sounds, with clear nods to early Jimmy Eat World and (perhaps imagined) evocations of bands like Saves The Day, The Get Up Kids, and The Promise Ring.
In contrast to their early EPs and splits, Supersonic Home moved into a much less angsty territory. The music was still as open-hearted and confessional as those early songs, but the choruses were sharper, and the instrumentals were more driving and muscular. While Reba Meyers was still the primary singer, vocals were now much more of a shared effort, with Kimi Hanauer clearly coming into her own in the few years since their first output. Together, their vocals entwined over upbeat instrumentals that sit somewhere between 90s alt-rock and modern pop-punk. This was baggy shirt, flannel-clad rock shit for sure, but it also feels like music made to be held on a compact disc.
If you want an ideal setting for a listen of Supersonic Home, I recommend waiting for the first sunny day of the year and going for a walk with this playing on your headphones. Maybe it’s just due to its February release, but I’ll always associate this album with the beginning of the year, often reserving it for one of those first days you can wear shorts (or at least shed your jacket). There’s nothing quite like stretching your legs, feeling the sun on your skin, and letting the sounds of Supersonic Home flow through you. I genuinely feel fortunate that this has been something I’ve been able to return to year after year for the last decade without tiring.
From second one, it’s impossible not to get wrapped up in that opening drum roll on “Dream Blue Haze.” After four minutes of building and building, how can you not want to belt along “Your Sweetness” by the time that final refrain rolls around?
Looking at the lyrics for a song like “Heavenly,” it’s amazing how far the band can go off so little. The verse is literally ten words, yet the outpouring at the end of the song when Meyers belts “He’s a swarm / he’s a swarm / I am unforgiven” is as hard-hitting as any breakdown Code Orange ever concocted.
I could name practically any track off this album and burrow into its brilliance: the awestruck “Longhair,” the charged-up “Absolution, Warmth Required,” the bouncy closing title track. Throughout every one of these songs, the band casts an energetic blue-tinted spell on the listener, whisking them away into a hand-crafted, watercolored world like the one seen on the cover or in their music videos. Throughout it all, Reba and Kimi maintain a beautiful interplay, trading vocals, harmonizing, and adding a soft compassion to every song that bounces off the punky guitars beautifully.
While part of me is sad that we never got anything more from this project, the collective hour of music we got from it is worth it. Probably for the best that the band didn’t keep returning to the well and diluting it with redundant music and touring, after all, their day job in Code Orange was calling the entire time. I guess what I’m saying is sometimes it’s better to know when to throw in the towel and put a period at the end of everything. To that end, I’ll leave you with the Wikipedia description of their vague-at-best ending, which never fails to make me laugh.
