The word ‘home’ carries many meanings. It’s a person, a place, or a memory that speaks to the soul. In late adolescence, that meaning often gets challenged. The need for it is often at risk. For talent that’s outgrown their one traffic light town, like the Castellows from Georgetown, Georgia, that exodus becomes as necessary as it is challenging. What’s the point of writing if those songs never leave the living room? Then again, what’s the world to think when you’re looking for a big break with only six strings attached? Each instance becomes a case study in country music, where small towns and big dreams butt heads. How much of home can still live on in you while the world tries to chip away at it?
The glow and shine from “Homecoming,” the trio’s newest project, is as alluring as challenging. Their lifetime’s worth of chemistry borders on the supernatural, as if they know they’re women out of time. A portion of that is upbringing, the three girls being homeschooled for most of their early years before the folks at Warner thrust them into the spotlight. Most of their lives, and ergo their inspirational pulls, feel not of this world. That innate soft side stands out when cuts and scrapes are often used as currency in songwriting.
“Old Way,” the project’s opener, is privy to the fact that those days have been getting smaller in the rearview mirror the more time they spend in Nashville. It’s a pull-out-of-the-driveway, one last look at Ma and Pa lullaby, trying to cram all those comforting images into the back of the brain before they’ve lost complete sight of the picture. The lyrics are a rattle of cliches and polaroids, but the voices breathing them into existence are full of life despite how flighty they are. The road feels like silk rather than gravel; these harmonies signal the next mile marker.
Almost as a counterpoint to their unblemished presentation, the Castellows are getting more personal and comfortable in their stain-free skin. “Sheltered” is an aptly titled breakaway ballad that embraces societal shortcomings rather than deflecting them. What starts as a cold and lonely tale on an empty apartment floor ends as the three wise women learn that home is often found in flesh and blood rather than under tin roofs. Written collaboratively by all three Balkcom sisters, it’s eerie how in sync their collective consciousness gets even on tracks that border on the autobiographical.
That singular heartbeat doesn’t get left behind at the ranch, either. This crew travels in packs, and that familial bond seems to be an integral part of the package deal they’re selling to bigwigs industry-wide. The dichotomy in “Freeway” and “Place They Call Home” exercise some muscle groups where that notion is much-needed. The former scribbles a letter to home after hitting the road, and the latter a comforting write-back (with the help of fellow crunchy crooner Cleto Cordero). If “Freeway” nabs a little bump of bluegrass to kickstart the journey, then its sister song takes the comforting prairie plush that Cordero’s Flatland Cavalry has spent a decade perfecting. Though sentiment gets stretched and contorted just as freely, it’s a strong push in different sonic directions.
But as our title glaringly suggests, all roads eventually lead back home for these three. Though if they were supposed to sound exhausted and worn down, no one bothered to tell them that. Their title track, while breathy and beaten down vocally, is hurried to reach the front porch. Once the chorus hits, it sounds like the fatted calf has been killed for these prodigal daughters. It’s a blend of their native bluegrass tongue, some folkie spunk in its lyricism, with a little contemporary holler thrown in for good measure. Whoops and cheers can be heard peppered in between the frantic fiddle. Everything they know, for better or worse, seems to be within the confines of these few acres. Even if memories accrued on the outside make for an interesting contrast, this is no doubt where they’re at their most confident.
“Homecoming” is a trip around the block that plucks up several new sounds and experiences to bring back to the hearth for a fireside chat. After all, the Castellows are showing themselves to be a “just add water” collective, free from the burden of having the rubber meet the road to the point of painful friction to get a good song out of the experience. Either that, or they’re exceptionally skilled at transforming trauma into something that sounds ethereal.
