Bea MacDonald wanted to write The Great American Song. Hunting Season, the third LP with her band Home Is Where, has 13 of these, each one detailing the dying thoughts of an Elvis impersonator consumed by fumes and flames in a car wreck. To be clear, these songs are not all sung from the perspective of the same dying Elvis impersonator, but from 13 different Elvis impersonators, all dying in a thirteen-car pileup. An unlucky number of imitation Elvises, each grasping at their final scraps of life as they all burn—stuck in separate cars, but together in wreckage and in death. What could be more American than that?
Hunting Season is, in MacDonald’s words, “Real Southern rock ‘n roll.” Hailing from the Florida swamplands, Home Is Where are no strangers to the worst of the havoc that this country continues to unleash onto its inhabitants. This album is their most stunning, warts-and-all encapsulation of their love-hate relationship with the American mess, often at its most concentrated south of the Mason-Dixon line. “I love you, but sometimes you’re the worst person I’ve ever met,” MacDonald sings on “Drive-By Mooning,” the record’s closer. “I love you, but sometimes I’m the worst person I’ve ever been.” The fires burn on, smoke rising above a towering pile of smashed cars, the faces of 13 Elvises reflected in broken review windows. American absurdity at its finest.
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