Time flows. That’s what scientists say and scientists are always right. Most albums, unsurprisingly, are a product of their times and, if they are not, then they will sound like they are the product of another time. “Home” by Xan Tyler & Dusty Stray indeed sounds like it is the product of another time. Or maybe more than one time. Or maybe simply out of any time.
Downbeat and low key as if only melancholy could be used as artistic inspiration, these ten songs have no markers set for the fashions and sounds of today yet the combination of a rather appealing fragility, minimalist arrangements and two voices that are always on the same page works rather better than you might reasonably expect. As you might therefore anticipate, this approach ensures that these songs have none of the immediate appeal of a three minute manufactured pop song, and I doubt that was ever the plan for Xan Tyler & Dusty Stray, but all that space left around the lyrics does allow your mind to pleasantly wander where it will while these songs drift by. As a consequence, and if you tend towards a more philosophical outlook on life, an album like this, an album free of the desperations of today, could therefore rightly be accused and convicted of courting timelessness.
So, when all is said and done, “Home” is something of an oddity. Sentimentality is, of course, included free of charge, yet it is most unusual. in these days of getting to the point before the next train arrives, that a whole album should be so casually set on the downbeat path. Is this like “Nancy and Lee Again”? Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.