HOMESHAKE - CD WALLET
Dine Alone
Released on March 8th, 2024
I’ve been a fan of Montreal-based Peter Sagar’s project HOMESHAKE for ages- ever since 2014’s In The Shower. That was a full ten years ago now, and in the interim Sagar released several synth- and drum machine-oriented albums that also rip. In CD Wallet, a March 8 release on his imprint SHHOAMKEE, Sagar reincorporates his early flavours of live-feeling drums and guitar into a record that departs from the playful, unhurried R&B groove that HOMESHAKE has hugged for the last five albums. This latest release is heavy and nostalgic: drinking-behind-dumpsters downtempo shoegaze ooze.
The first sounds on the record have the effect of a distorted windchime, followed by a warbling electric guitar strum. Sagar’s vocals are subdued, and the melody has a call-and-response effect: “How’s it feel / waking up to get out of your dream? / Barely real / but enough to be frayed at the seams”. The tone is effectively set, but is it as grim as it appears? Sagar’s intention with this album was to dive headfirst into the headspace he inhabited as a thirteen-year-old, standing in front of two-for-fifteen CD racks at the HMV in Edmonton. “I don’t know if I should have embraced nostalgia so intensely”, he says of the album, before reflecting further: “It was sort of an inevitability.”
CD Wallet is a heavy record, but its conception of isolation is permeated by a sense of cozy indulgence. Sagar, an introvert, sings a love song to escapism in the ode “Basement”: “I’m with my friends in the basement / Happiest here in my basement”. The song opens up with a fuzzed-out guitar and snapping, crashing snare and cymbal hits that move within the same envelope to create a woozy backdrop of decay and renewal for Sagar’s slacker vocals. The build falls away to reveal a pared-back outro, and somehow no energy is lost.
This sense of consistent propulsion stands out to me throughout the record. Sagar deftly leans into glacial tempos and dynamic production, employing weighty choruses and builds that cut abruptly, but the feeling of consistency remains. The big moments retain their intimacy and the quieter ones their energy. CD Wallet feels warm and candid throughout: it is washed in a retrospective shimmer that makes the darkness not only palatable but inviting.
- Sophie Noel