Feel his intensity.

[Video][Website]
[4.89]

Abby Waysdorf: I first heard this song on a radio station that plays both former and current Top 40; I’m frequently unfamiliar with past hits in this country, so I assumed this was an older song I’d missed. As I kept hearing it, though, I realized it was a new song that just sounded like The Alarm. Via, of course, all the contemporary permutations of Celtic-folkish-indie, and from a Dutch singer-songwriter rather than an Anglo/Irish conglomeration of haircuts. Nothing groundbreaking, but with a power and propulsion that makes it stand out from its reference points and contemporaries. A football chant gone moody, with a precise military thump and almost-acapella chorus, easy to remember and get swept up in. While I might have been surprised as to when and where it came from, that it’s a hit from somewhere is obvious at the first refrain.
[7]

Anthony Easton: He was born in Israel, is Dutch, and has worked in Nigeria for Amnesty International. The concept of home is such a fucked-up broken concept, especially with dealing with nationalisms, and though this is supposed to be inspirational, the concept, and Dotan’s history, makes it sound so anthemic that I cannot help but think of something sinister. 
[4]

Kat Stevens: If Adventure Time is anything to go by, the standard of children’s television is pretty damn high these days. Therefore I have my doubts whether this gritty reboot of The Littlest Hobo will get past the preview screenings.
[4]

Alfred Soto: I’ve no tolerance for this intense, overdubbed, and no doubt bearded melancholy. The “home” metaphor sounds especially tired from the mouths of man babes.
[3]

David Sheffieck: If it wasn’t bad enough for a song to go Lumineers-by-way-of-Bastille, the song has to be called “Home”? I guess, at least, this is useful if in a decade someone wants to illustrate the two most overused trends of the past few years in one three-minute track. Wait, this stretches to four and a half?
[2]

Scott Mildenhall: Two singles called “Home” have come out in the UK this week, both with different, clear angles on homecoming. Leah McFall “clicks her heels” to escape a dystopian landscape deserted by Edward Sharpe, while Naughty Boy lazes in every sense towards a late summer weariness. The theme is there in each case, and it’s a key this lacks – Dotan could easily have called it “Going Down The Shops”. Wind, fire, rivers – not home, but a bunch of loose signifiers looking for better vocals, lyrics and instrumentation.
[4]

Megan Harrington: I’ve always been very fortunate to have a home and to feel that sense of belonging. Even when I felt implicitly unwelcome at school sleepovers or stressed out on vacation, I knew I was lucky to feel home so strongly that its absence, even temporarily, was upsetting. Dotan is playing our emotions like a snare hit in time with a heartbeat, but I can only imagine that if you don’t have a home, or you’ve been displaced, the search must sound a little like this song. It’s a mixture of clear-eyed pride, a pure and noble pursuit, and the swirling confusion of nighttime. A song as earnest as “Home,” that looks you in the eyes without flinching, can be an easy target for ridicule. I can’t help but look back, and I hear an anthem.  
[8]

Brad Shoup: The album’s called 7 Layers, so I can only imagine what the other six ingredients of Dotan’s doom-folk burrito could be.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: There’s a scene in Michael Gentry’s Little Blue Men (SPOILERS AHOY FOR ANYONE WHO IS THEORETICALLY GOING TO PLAY AN INTERACTIVE FICTION GAME BASED ON A JUKEBOX BLURB FOR A SONG ABOUT DUTCH TOLKIEN-SWELLPOP) where you escape your Dilbertian brainwash prison for something that turns out to be yet another brainwash prison: “In the valley below, young men and women in wispy robes frolic chastely about, dancing together amongst the wildflowers and the romping sheep. Everyone is laughing. Everyone has a pretty pink balloon that they hold by its string. It is innocence and carefree, everywhere you look. Also, you notice immediately, you are naked. Completely naked. This doesn’t bother you as much as part of you thinks it should.” It’s supposed to be a horror ending, but doesn’t it sound so pretty? Pretending it doesn’t is like pretending I don’t find “Home” core-to-the-bones stirring: the proper response, the total lie.
[7]