'home' by motko is a record about leaving far enough to finally know how to stay.

motko is the brainchild of Shorty. He grew up wanting to make music, took piano lessons as a kid, wanted to go to music school, but then he was told he wasn't good enough. He believed it. He then pursued a safer path and spent seven years in a corporate job. It took him forty years to realise that music wasn't something he did alongside his life. It was HIS life.

The result is his brand-new album, 'home', released under the solo project name motko.

And it is one of the best albums I've come across this week.

'home' is a nine-track alternative rock album. It might even be closer to a film than a playlist. 'wake up' opens the record gently. There's something melancholically fragile about it. It's addressed to someone called Lenka, the world waiting for her to arrive, and it sets the tone for an album that is, at its heart, about readiness. As an opener, I really like it because it gives the listeners the benefit of any initial doubts they had going into the album.

'ready when you are' is where the guitar work starts to stretch out. Lyrically, it's one of my favourites on the record, too. It's a love song of sorts, but also about taking accountability. 'birds were telling us all the time' is where the narrator looks at himself and sees someone else. Someone fighting for space, building walls.

'liberation' is where things get thornier. The narrator is pointing fingers and realising mid-song that the face he's pointing at is his own. It's quite uncomfortably clever. The production on this one is denser, more claustrophobic, which works perfectly in the song's favour. 'sailing' is my personal highlight on the whole record, I think. Terrified about what might have happened, satisfied about what already did. And then the creed at the end: "Don't sh*t yourself!", which honestly made me chuckle. That's a motko thing, apparently. Truth and love, for heaven's sake.

'old' is the album's most sardonic moment and also one of the bravest. It's bitter and self-aware and a little bit funny in the darkest way. 'love' strips things back further. The chorus-of-cruelty in the middle is the voices in your head that a lot of people might recognise immediately.

'wellmess' and yes, that's the spelling, might be the most emotionally exposed track on the record. Shorty talks in his zine about sensitivity: how it means the world gets under your skin more easily, but also how it's the part of you that knows something is wrong before you can explain why. This song is that feeling in full.

'you better run' brings the album to a conclusion. This is the edgiest song on the record, the most rockiest rock, even! The end result isn't triumphant, exactly. It's more like an instruction to get out, let the dust settle, and find out who you really are once you do.

Shorty has made this record while trying to understand which parts of him were really his, and which were old habits, fear, family stories and expectations he learned before he had words for them. This is one of the most exceptional storytelling albums I've come across in a while. I will be adding the zine below if you want more background on motko's journey to this album.

'home' by motko is out now. The companion zine 'Finding Your Way Back Home' is available as a download, and for any future releases, vinyl and limited art prints, head to motko.eu.

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