Home Is Where make anxiety-riddled but cathartic rock songs about the apocalypse. the whaler—the Palm Coast, Florida quartet’s ambitious and exhilarating sophomore full-length—is a concept record about getting used to things getting worse.

Across 10 interconnected but self-contained songs, the album captures the desensitization and disorientation of tragedy becoming mundane. the whaler, produced by Jack Shirley (Joyce Manor, Deafheaven) at Atomic Garden in Oakland, CA, marks an unmistakable new chapter for frontwoman Brandon MacDonald’s songwriting, subverting the expectations left by her band’s 2021 debut LP I Became Birds for something equally resonant, but darker and more expansive.

While the whaler paints a bleak picture of a world in an endless state of collapse–of ruined utopias and desperate people faking normalcy–there’s a humanity-affirming undercurrent throughout that screams to break free.