A few years ago, I remember hearing this song ‘Home’ by Great Northern quite often on Indie radio here in LA. They are a band from Los Angeles, essentially a duo consisting of Rachel Stolte and Solon Bixler, who have released two albums.
As I said, ‘Home’ from their first album ‘Trading Twilight For Daylight’ was played heavily in 2007 and was even used in a Nissan Murano commercial but I really want to forget about that. In this harsh market do artists like them have the choice if they want to survive anyway?
This song has something very soothing and calming like a remedy after a hard experience. And there is a lot of power for a music that makes you stand still. The ethereal vocals of Rachel Stolte in the chorus in particular generate an appeasing atmosphere which fills the space around you. It’s like gliding in the middle of the sky contemplating your shadow on the ground or floating on a vast ocean with all the wind in your hair,… Hum, any imagery of that sort must be coming from all that talk about drug and medicine and from the line ‘For the rest of your life/You’re gonna be high…’
There are a lot of metaphors here, drugs? medicine? doctor? Is someone sick? It cannot be taken literally! Could it be about someone who is dying? Coming home/heaven and high for the rest of his life? I prefer to think it suggests a struggle and a liberation that leads to ‘home,’ a resting place, a calming resort. The melody is alternatively sung by Rachel and Solon and the balance between the two seems like a dialogue between a male and a female voices, an exchange that leads, in a crescendo. to the chorus sang by Rachel alone as an answer to the first voice.
‘Come home/It’s something less than a holiday/When you come home/It’s something less than a holiday.’
The beautiful orchestration and the melody, which could remind a George Harrison song, give a redeeming climate to the song despite the ambiguously depressive lyrics.