While Home Star may be new to the scene, Evan Lescallette (Home Star’s sole songwriter and founding member of MARIETTA) has always been writing music. Though the bulk of A Binding Life was written from 2020 to 2023 as the COVID-19 pandemic settled into an unnerving routine, traces of Home Star’s debut album go all the way back to 2015. The record is a culmination of change, discovery, turmoil, and love.

Each song is made up of the painstaking attention to detail Lescallette pours into all of his
songwriting, with each phrase, riff, and harmony forming an intricate vision board molded into a meticulous frame. As he sings on “Weekends”, “You want to know what’s in the back of my
head?” – well, it’s certainly not “nothing” as he later says, but years and years of writing and refining.

There’s a little bit of everything on A Binding Life. Some bits can be found in the surf rock and garage indie influences nestled in the underbelly of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, while other bits stem from a deep rooted affection for punk rock and a soft spot for an anthemic chorus.

Perhaps most prominent, though, is an underlying sense of acceptance and comfort despite the general unease in the lyrics throughout the album. Comfort in the sense of place, in identity, and in accepting things outside one’s control. “Even if the sky was falling down / We’d find space” Lescallette sings at the beginning of “Bunker”, a sentiment that bubbles to the top over and over again as each song makes its way through some form of rock odyssey.

This is a big album in most ways. Recorded at Philadelphia’s Hidden Fortress by Kieran Ferris and mastered by Todd Mecaughey, A Binding Life storms its way through 13 (!!) songs and spans genres, all while staying firmly planted in the punk rock ethos. There are love songs, sad songs, angry songs, ballads, songs about religion, songs about loss, songs about home town news, brought together in a robust medley of raging guitars and drums (played by Tim McMonigle) that creates Home Star’s signature flavor of rock and, this can’t be emphasized enough, roll. Home Star might be making their debut, but this ain’t their first rodeo, and Lescallette is ready to let the cows out to pasture.

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