Album Review: Home Alone by White Beast
White Beast is a force. It’s a metallic cowboy with a C4 body vest, tearing out lyrics from the bottom of his rotten ribs. It’s a cold and calculated rebel warlord brandishing orders from atop a drum throne. A duo of rolling gears and unstoppable wheels. Their live show is a people’s movement, inspirational and powerful. In their recording kill count is an album, a multitude of singles, and three EPs, the most recent one being Home Alone released this past April through Sockhead Records.
At the start, we have a White Beast classic and the namesake of the album; “Home” is introduced by Jeff Rettberg’s bass riding the rails. You feel the hairs on your arm stand up as he chugs along, accented by Molly Gordon’s slight cymbal mystery, before you are aware you are in a war-torn chorus of pure drive. The bass and drums clear houses with life on the line. The lyrics tell a vague story of a religious struggle, burning prayers with unanswered questions searing and soaring into the air. There is so much loss, so much abandonment and uncertainty, reared by a charged and fiery Rettberg. The eyes lock with the climactic chant of “that’s home,” a place of loneliness and pain that you know all too well.
From there, we seamlessly transfer into “Un Bel Di,” which reads as a direct continuation of the story of the last song. This one has an anxiety that crawls from the laces of your boots, up your ankles, until you feel it around your neck. Midway through the song, Rettenberg hits a 90-degree angle and lets out a cry that would stir even the bed-ridden. The back half makes the listener contort into a deathly march towards an enemy that is just across the next street. This song perfectly captures the moment of rejection that a young person faces. It is the situation in which one veers off of a paved path and thrashes their way through the vines and brambles, engine pumping pure rage adrenaline. The ending instills the dreaded feeling of a crash, leaving the character panting and passing out in a hostile and new environment, looking into the glazed sun and falling back into the void.
The next song, “So It Goes,” slams the brakes, and instantly the character is transported towards something familiar, but maybe far off. A more indie progression introduces childhood memories, a time when it wasn’t necessarily easier, but simpler. A time when the dirt covering your clothes was from rolling down a hill. When your stress was negotiating a time to see friends. You are by the river. You are crossing a meadow. You are home. One thing that just slapped me in the face and held my attention in this song is the perspective of the lyrics. “Well I had my doubts\ But it all worked out,” Rettberg tells us, or perhaps someone tells him this. So many lyrics could easily be told from the character that has been introduced in the previous two songs, or it could be memories that they are drawing back to at a time of absolute loss. Is this what they know? What they think? What they wish? Masterpiece.
The story sprawls into the last track, “Servant.” Reality can whip against your cheeks like a cold wind funneling through Cary St. Toms beat a sadistic pattern, and something reverberates through the empty houses. They lock eyes and a heavy rhythm is executed. Rettenberg screams out to anyone and everyone. Gordon’s drums crawl into your ears and pound your brain, sending out Morse code orders that you will follow to your death. The cry of “Liar” stands out the most to me. Is this directed at the speaker of the last song? Themselves? It is such a thought-provoking accusation. This is the real turning point where the direction of the character’s previous actions are questioned and we see a rejection of the lie that they bought into. The raw betrayal in the titular scream of “Servant” encompasses a generation poisoned against itself, made to serve something that would eventually pull the fingernails out of life itself. White Beast is no servant.
Home Alone is simultaneously a sum of the White Beast sound and a showcase of the incredible diversity and ingenuity from this drum/bass duo. I think we have gotten glimpses of this, such as their 2024 cover of “The Beer” by Kimya Dawson, but the pure White Beast flavor on this EP is rich and filling. The story that can be deciphered from these four songs is an all-encompassing look at the challenges and lies fed to young America, and how both recovery and rejection are possible. I think the biggest mistake a man could make is to underestimate the Richmond force, White Beast.
Home Alone is out now on all streaming platforms via Sockhead Records. To stay up-to-date on White Beast, make sure to follow them on social media.
