Listen to “I Couldn’t Cry Before I Wrote EPs” by No Home

The latest offering from the musician and artist Charlie Valentine, who performs under the name No Home, feels like a small blessing. Touching on loneliness, autonomy, and the rare sliver of hope, the 10-song collection Fucking Hell is a bold mix of experimental wanderings and unflinching truths. The project evokes Kim Gordon’s recent solo debut in name and in spirit: scrounging up a means of survival by trusting and following every creative impulse.

Among standouts like “A B- in This Economy” and “4×4,” “I Couldn’t Cry Before I Wrote EPs” captures Fucking Hell’s raw heart. Opening with a surge of jagged, fried noise and distorted samples, the song soon mellows out into near-silence. “Oh, modern life is overwhelming,” Valentine sings, wearily stretching out the last word. “And therapy is too expensive, so I’ll have to sing along.” “I Couldn’t Cry” viscerally rumbles on as they sing of fear, paranoia, and public displays of affliction over heavy, ominous drums and a wash of lo-fi industrial droning. “If you think masculinity will protect you, you’re wrong/Only white people dream of utopias,” they proclaim near the end. No Home exposes the ugliness of the world and the determination it takes to keep moving forward.