With Songs of Homecoming, The Beauty of Gemina crafts an evocative return to the band's electronic roots while charting a meditation on belonging and transformation. Four years after Skeleton Dreams, this ninth studio album emerges quietly, enveloping listeners in an intricate world of shadow and light. On February 21, the Swiss darkwave legends will perform at Control Club.
Over the course of nearly two decades, The Beauty of Gemina has established itself as one of the most idiosyncratic acts in darkwave and goth rock. Formed in 2006, the band’s earliest releases, Diary of a Lost (2006) and A Stranger to Tears (2008), introduced its shadowy post-punk, electronic textures and melancholic storytelling blend. As things progressed, they moved from the glacial synths of At the End of the Sea (2010) to the grandeur of Ghost Prayers (2014) and the stripped-down Skeleton Dreams (2020), ultimately making Songs of Homecoming, released in 2024, feel like a thematic and sonic return. The album’s title reflects its core themes of longing and transition, but as Sele states in Countless (There's No Home), "So many doors / But there's no home." Here, home is a spectral concept rarely found.
From the opening strains, there is an immediate familiarity with the carefully woven atmosphere of minor and major harmonies. Singer Michael Sele’s unmistakable baritone guides its entirety. Unlike its stripped-down predecessors, Songs of Homecoming reintroduces electronics, lending tracks like Whispers of the Seasons, a Clan of Xymox-esque brooding elegance across the emotional spectrum. The album’s opener sets the tone with its yearning invocation: "I'm missing the winter / The silence as it unfolds / Snowflakes on your face."
Then there is the melancholy of Countless (There's No Home) to the measured tension of God Willing. Dreams of the Vagabonds floats through wistful reverie, while Running So Far finds its place among the twilight-tinged melodies of mid-career Depeche Mode. I Call You the Sun offers a glimpse of tenderness amid the brooding ambiance, while Symphony of Solitude posts a rockier aesthetic.
And yet, resolution remains elusive. Instead of providing easy closure, time and time again, Songs of Homecoming returns to its central theme: what does home mean? Is it a physical place, an ephemeral memory, or merely a construct of yearning? The final track, When My Ship Comes In, gives the impression of arrival, yet Sele sings, "And the wind will change / In a silver dawn, a silver fire," again suggesting the perpetual journey.
Gothic Americana and 80s post-punk revivalism make up the emotional core of Songs of Homecoming. Sele’s compositions offer the dusky Hurt-era Johnny Cash. Unlike gothic rock’s tendency for dramatic excess, The Beauty of Gemina draws its intensity from controlled elegance. Like Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker, there’s a pervasive sense of mortality and memory in life’s passing moments without overstatement.
Songs of Homecoming is neither a mere return to the past nor a complete departure. It offers a journey through longing, recollection, and transition— a homecoming that is tantalizingly out of reach.
