ALBUM REVIEW: Home Remedy – Sundressed

If you’ve ever found yourself waking up with the sniffles or muddling through a mind numbing migraine, the chances are you’ve more than likely tried your hand at a home remedy or two. Whether it’s throwing honey and lemon into your tea or trialling an essential oil your grandma gave you, you’ve tried it – and you might even be wondering if you should try it again. On their sophomore effort, indie-emo’s SUNDRESSED cook up a Home Remedy of their own as they try out the sound they trialled on 2017’s A Little Less Put Together. 

Building on the blocks of their debut, SUNDRESSED filter their coffee-pot confessions through a fusion of emo, indie and pop-punk flavours to pop out a half hour self-care session of big hook bangers. In a scene where the flag bearers are either on hiatus (MODERN BASEBALL, we miss you) or highly problematic (SORORITY NOISE, MOOSE BLOOD, the list goes on…), SUNDRESSED seize the opportunity to put themselves in the driving seat with their most consistent outing so far.

No Thanks is full-frontal riffage, firing out of the starting gate with velocity and bolstered by choral gang vocals whilst Is This A Drug slip and slides through high-stakes punk and big-room indie choruses like it was originally written for PUP. So far, SUNDRESSED‘s home remedies are surefire safe bets to keep the wolves at bay. Elsewhere on the album, they write acoustically-driven tongue-in-cheek takes on toxic masculinity (Sensitive Motherfucker) and back porch fairy-light power-pop indie rich with honey-soaked harmonies and heart-wrenching hooks (Cash Out). These expeditions into experimental remedies allow Home Remedy to stand out as an album in a scene stagnating in its own instability. 

For anyone who’s ever found their way through anything remotely emo, you’ll be all-too familiar with its tendency to pander to the pessimistic on every level. SUNDRESSED outright reject this expectation and paint their reality with some sugar coated optimism. Vocalist Trevor Hedges throws out social media caption-worthy quotes that put a positive spin on his own personal struggles with mental health in the modern age against a background of juxtaposingly jangly guitar courtesy of guitarist AJ Peacox with aplomb. Lines like “Anytime I think that I’m dying, I’m usually fine” and “I’m not getting better and I’m not getting worse, A Little Less Put Together started with the dirt” showcase their ability to not only be positive but to share a nod to where they’ve come from.

Mental health awareness has become increasingly more important in recent years, and has become a bit of a hot topic for artists to hop onto, especially in the world of indie-emo and pop-punk. SUNDRESSED avoid the trials and tribulations of tracing over the tropes by putting their refreshingly confessional and honest anecdotes to paper, creating a layer of authenticity to Home Remedy across it’s ten tracks. This is a band who’ve been through it, whether it’s being broke and therefore blocked from the healthcare they need to navigating and negotiating the narratives of growing up and living in the modern age, which ultimately pays off as their songs are way too relatable, often hitting home harder than you’d expect. This is perhaps best highlighted in the harmony-heavy hook of single Oh Please: “I can’t pay a single bill, I haven’t seen a doctor still, I just hope this doesn’t kill me”.

Alongside Mike Pepe’s [TAKING BACK SUNDAY, BAYSIDE, ANARBOR] near-perfectly polished production, SUNDRESSED inject their impassioned stance on spreading mental health awareness, and in particular, the fact that hope truly can and does exist, into a bloodstream of big-room ready choruses that’ll have you singing along so soon the message will simply slip into your subconscious.

Home Remedy isn’t the first time SUNDRESSED have tried these types of remedies, nor is it the first time an indie-emo act have taken on the task. Nonetheless, Home Remedy is quite possibly the finest collection of indie-emo bangers the year of the pandemic has heard, and at the end of the day, that’s all that matters to cure the pain for a minute. 

Rating: 8/10

Home Remedy is set for release on September 18th via Rude Records. 

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