Homebase Arrive Fully Formed on Debut EP, Close To Something

Article Contributed by Rebecca McDevitt

There's a specific kind of music that doesn't just sound like your teenage years, it feels like them. The kind that puts you right back in your parents' living room, watching local bands play basements and VFW halls, wondering if feeling everything this loudly and this openly was something you'd eventually grow out of. Listening to Homebase's debut EP Close To Something, the answer, at least for this reviewer, is a hard no.

Press photograph of Homebase provided by Earshot Media

The NJ/NY five-piece formed in the summer of 2023 out of what started as casual hangouts, pizza, and late night jam sessions that turned serious the moment the chemistry became undeniable. They built their reputation the old-fashioned way, relentless DIY hustle and raw, high-energy live shows across the Northeast punk and hardcore circuit, and Close To Something is the clearest argument yet for why people should be paying attention. From the jump, they sound like exactly what would happen if blink-182 and New Found Glory had a kid who grew up going to hardcore shows in New Jersey. At just 11 minutes across five tracks, the EP wastes nothing. Every second earns its place.

What ties it together isn't just the sound, it's one central feeling threaded through every song.

Front to back, Close To Something is about being stuck, stuck in your own head, stuck in cycles you can name but can't seem to break, standing in your own way and watching yourself do it. It's a familiar pop-punk subject, but Homebase makes it feel lived-in and specific.

Album artwork for Homebase's EP Close To Something. Artwork provided by Earshot Media

The title track sets the tone immediately, a low intro of drums that cracks open into two minutes of abrasive guitars and a chorus that wants to be shouted back. It's the most blink of the five songs, all suburban restlessness and sing-along melody, but the lyrics do something a little more complicated. Something is always within reach, close enough to feel, but you can't quite get there, whether it's you or the universe doing the holding back. The optimism is hard-won, and that's what makes it stick.

"Start Over" earns its place as the EP's breath, stripped back and almost confessional, like locking yourself in your room and turning everything over before you decide what to do next. It's an interlude in the truest sense, and it belongs exactly where it sits, because what comes after it needs the runway.

"Nuff Said" is where the New Found Glory DNA shows up fully and where the EP reveals what it's really about. This is a song about getting in your own way, knowing you're stuck in a cycle, seeing it clearly, and still not being able to break out. The dual vocals give it a push-pull energy that fits the subject perfectly, and it builds into something heavier and more chaotic by the end. The kind of song you put on when you need to scream something you don't have words for yet. It's the centerpiece, and it earns it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV-QZz-2Mi8

"Bold" clocks in at under two minutes with no traditional chorus and is somehow immediately lodged in your head. It's about the kind of relationship that costs you yourself, where someone's boldness with their words leaves you bold in your mind but lost everywhere else, looking for a way out and throwing a quiet but very clear middle finger on the way. The bass line on the breakdown is worth the price of admission alone.

The closer, "I Feel," is where the EP's whole emotional arc lands. The admission that things have gone too far, that you're stuck, that you know it, and that something has to change even if you're not sure how yet. It doesn't wrap anything up. It ends with the particular kind of numbness that comes right before something shifts, and that's exactly the right place to leave it.

Pop-punk has always been at its best when it refuses to pretend things are fine while still refusing to give up, and Close To Something lives in that space with real conviction. A record for anyone who's ever been close but not quite there, who's wanted to start over without knowing where to begin, who's known they were stuck without knowing how to get out.

Soundcheck Verdict: Homebase don't sound like a band figuring it out, but a band that already knows exactly who they are. Close To Something is 11 minutes of hardcore-infused pop-punk that hits harder than most full-lengths, with five songs that all pull in the same direction without ever feeling repetitive. "Bold" already crossed 30,000 streams before the EP even dropped. The region is starting to notice. A full-length from these guys isn't just something to look forward to. It's something to wait for.

Rating: 7/10