![]() The moments where The Hope List truly takes flight are when doubt is overcome and a new dawn beckons. At the core lies internal desperation, rather than optimism. ‘ It’s such a game,’ the singer admits, ‘ I lose again, but now and then I listen.’ Meanwhile, a Rhodes piano picks out a simplistic melody like a broken nursery rhyme. The title track itself gazes inwards as Jack queries the sense in filing pain away into songs. ‘ How can you call it a win, when we’re bound to love and lose again?’ Jack howls on Bound, with no answer forthcoming. Even soaring tunes are frequently undercut by questions. ‘ Faulty circuits bind, caged eyes, caged mind,’ is the bleak forecast espoused over an earth-churning bass line on Bright Eyes. If the energised performances speak to Lonely The Brave’s renewed confidence, lyrically The Hope List is overcast with doubt and uncertainty. And as the album’s de facto producer, with instrumentals recorded at the singer’s West Yorkshire home studio, his expansive mix is sympathetic to a band whose past triumphs evoked a feeling of charting the unknown. On Keeper, his straining delivery harnesses the updraft of Mark Trotter and Ross Smithwick’s guitars to achieve lift-off, while Your Heavy Heart sees him holding ground as waves of tumultuous guitar and drums rise and crash around him. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given Jack’s career as one-man band Grumble Bee, he is able to lend himself easily to any situation. The momentum carries forward into Distant Lights, where echoing, arpeggiated guitars set sights on the stars.Ĭrucially, Jack’s airy voice suits the interplay between building rhythms and spectral guitars clashing overhead. Drummer Mo Edgeley and bassist Andrew Bushen propel the track like a trusty engine, yet the anticipation felt by all is clear as Mo’s snare crackles and leaps into a firework display chorus. Opener Bound courses with urgency as they push towards an unfolding horizon of glacial synths. As the band emerges from cover with a new album – their first with vocalist Jack Bennett – The Hope List comes loaded with expectation.
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