The Homesick

The Homesick are Elias Elgersma, Jaap van der Velde and Erik Woudwijk. The Homesick fuses post-punk rhythms with melodic whimsical pop into an experimental blend of great songs. The band has been around since their first EP Television from 2013 and released their debut album Youth Hunt (Subroutine) in 2017. Hailing from the backwater Frisian municipality of Dokkum, the band shrewdly courted spirituality under their own nonconformist whims. The album played with this ambiguity as they incorporated this in their sound through the mixing of dark post-punk with sure-fire pop earworms. Their second album The Big Exercise (SubPop) from 2020 inverses this sound, second-guessing their core chemistry as a live unit. Where the debut album incorporates vocals drenched in reverb, warped synths and distorted guitars, the Big Excercise leaves a hint of romanticism through the baroque elements such as piano, acoustic guitar, percussion and clarinet. Shortly after the release of The Big Exercise they individually started to explore new musical directions. Guitar and bass were dropped as Elias and Jaap searched for other sounds playing keys, sample boxes and more new rhythmic instruments. The new songs are unmistakably The Homesick and at the same time like you've never heard them before.