When idiosyncratic Tacoma, Washington alt-rockers
Enumclaw
put together their first album (2022's
Save the Baby
), it was very much the project of singer, songwriter, and rhythm guitarist
Aramis Johnson
, whose relatively lucid voice and anxious introspections cut through the murky wall of guitars and feedback of the project's heavier songs and added emo-like distress to their poppier, more spacious material. Without diminishing
Johnson
's band-defining presence, the follow-up,
Home in Another Life
, found the group -- now deeply bonded -- working more collaboratively. A more consistently angsty, saturated sound results that's in harmony with lyrics about struggle, self-examination, and challenging life events on songs with titles like "Change," "Sink," and "Fall Came Too Soon and Now I Wanna Throw Up." It begins with a long squeal and the candid admission "I'm Scared I'll End Up All Alone," a song that doesn't set the stage so much as dive right into the heart of the matter. ("It's getting so hard just to love myself/Why can't I figure it out?") Family illness weighs heavily on "Not Just Yet," with
repeating "This can't be true" over and over for the chorus; one can't go home again on "Haven't Seen the Family in a While, I'm Sorry"; and "Spots" is one of several songs here to refer to a relationship-ending abortion. Throughout,
's melodic squalor borders on catchy, with songs that tend toward the short side and, while they ruminate, don't ramble. Recorded in Seattle with singer/songwriter
Ben Zaidi
co-producing, the album bears the influence of the city's historic music scene while offering a more intimate, almost Midwestern-sounding take than those legendary grunge acts. Whatever the influence, it works, and when the record ends with the tenderer "I Want Somethings for Myself," which sounds like a single-mike studio demo, it becomes even clearer that songwriting is the group's main driving force. ~ Marcy Donelson