Meredith Johnston’s latest album as Warm Human was inspired by a post-breakup impulse purchase: a Fender Telecaster. The fuzzy guitar tones of Hometown Hero were meant to signify the dizzying feel of realigning to everyday realities in the aftermath of a doomed romance, incidentally also providing a certain warmth to the tracks that matches the sense of comfort one feels once they’ve settled back into a comfortably independent routine. The result is a balance between that temperate inextreme which lends itself to Johnston’s moniker and a certain iciness in facing existential realities, an emotional palette coincidentally shared with Madeline Johnston of Midwife.
Among Hometown Hero’s tracklist, “Daylight Savings” stands out as a familiar chapter of post-breakup anxieties, with Johnston contemplating whether it’s appropriate to text her ex on their birthday. The track was written on one of many cross-country journeys from Chicago to Oakland she took between 2020 and 2022 offering probably too much time to think these things over. “‘Daylight Savings’ deals with the hope that travel brings ‘maybe I can be a different person here,’ or even ‘maybe I can be a different person in this relationship’ while knowing underneath that, no matter how far you drive, you can’t outrun yourself,” she explained upon the track’s release.
Today she’s sharing a video for the single entirely comprised of dashcam footage recorded during the aforementioned cross-country trips. “It features eight states in various seasons (including a basically empty Yellowstone park in July 2020),” she says of the clip. “I don't think I knew what I was shooting the footage for until I wrote this song, and then suddenly it all made sense.”
Watch the results below. Hometown Hero is out tomorrow—pre-order it here.
