- Tom Lyngcoln has spent the past couple of decades fashioning some sort of musical career out of his stark, brutal, often bleak and occasionally beautiful songwriting and guitar-wrangling, most notably with aggro-rock trio The Nation Blue, and more recently with the gospel-punk sextet Harmony (with some occasional forays into other projects such as Pale Heads). On Doming Home Lyngcoln strikes out on his own for the first time, offering up eleven stark songs performed entirely on guitar and his strained voice. The result is in keeping with his previous bands, but less -and also more- so. It's Harmony without the lightness provided by the counterpoint group vocals, The Nation Blue without the catharsis provided by pure volume and aggression. With those aesthetic elements stripped out the songs are left in a state of pure starkness, becoming even more bleak, even more brutal. There's no outlet for the listener's pent-up energy, Lyngcoln doesn't give them the mercy of an easy escape.
An easy comparison could be made between this record and the solo outing by Lyngcoln's contemporary, Gareth Liddiard's Strange Tourist. However, where that record gave Liddiard a space to stretch out and move into some areas that he might not have been able to explore in his main outfit, The Drones, Doming Home doesn't so much encourage Lyngcoln to experiment with different musical ideas so much as place a spotlight on many of the elements that have always been present in his music (although Out Of Time might be the most tender song he's yet released). Lateral Line is easy to imagine as a spine-tingling song performed by Harmony, but here the sparseness emphasises the song's bleakness. Elsewhere, the title track could have made for a brutal Nation Blue song, but instead its presentation highlights its exposed-nerve intensity. There's less, and yet there's more. By placing the songs on such a bare sonic stage, every gesture is magnified, every emotion is heightened.
Adding to this is the actual sound of the record. While Lyngcoln does allow himself the luxury of an occasional overdub of second guitar, generally the recording is incredibly minimalist. Everything sounds like it's been recorded from the other side of the room, and the effect is to add an element of emotional distance to something that is otherwise incredibly exposed. It's like listening to at bootleg of a private performance, at once incredibly intimate while also keeping the listener at arm's length. It's just one more way that Lyngcoln makes us work to get inside his record, but the rewards are worth it.
- Cameron Smith.