Hooray for Earth
True Loves
Rating: 3.1/5.0
Label: Dovecote
When it comes to ’80s-era influences, almost every band reads from the same book. It’s a good book, but after a while, to have the same faces – mid-career Michael, the New Order boys (with or without Ian Curtis), Marr and the Moz, the made-up mugs of the era’s movers and shakers – reappearing time and time again can be tiresome. Thankfully, this MTV monochrome is often tempered by infusions of new styles, new twists and new takes by the time it reaches the ears of listeners in the aughts and twenty-teens.
Enter Hooray for Earth and True Loves. Similarly, this New-York-by-way-of-Boston quartet has incorporated the same elements that catapulted MGMT to fame (and to shame with Congratulations, giving blue balls to critics across America) and which artists like Panda Bear and Caribou exploit to their advantage, albeit in differing ways. Attempting to weave it into their existing predilection toward psych and pop in the Animal Collective era, Hooray for Earth pile synth lines and massive hooks on in heaping neon stacks. On True Loves, the result is catchy, heart-pounding stuff, but it’s too shallow and too inconsistent to award a total pass to.
The starkest resemblance to Animal Collective is borne out in the eponymous single, which pulsates in Dodos-style percussion, faded harmonies and jangly dub reggae guitar. On this and the other tracks on the album, vocalist Noel Heroux maintains a simple equilibrium between disaffection and intimacy in his delivery, registering warmth in the higher reaches and intense swells even in spite of the cold textures and pulses underlining him. Rhythmic barrages are resurrected on closer “Black Trees” but are tempered there by gentle, high tones that layer on one another, slowly morphing into modulating bells, molding the song into a slick, slippery exit maneuver as Heroux pleads in Barry Gibbs falsetto, signing off with, “Over and out/ Until I’m under an exit sign.”
True Loves kickstarter “Realize It’s Not the Sun” marches in the Knife’s cadence, reveling in vocals as precious as any in the Sufjan Stevens discography, and comes to life unexpectedly on its own in beats and textures. It’s more or less straightforward save for the arpeggios, hiccupped backing vocals and artifice of faux-monastic chanting that ushers it in. Follow-up “Last Minute” breaks out in chamber pop notes, in the gravity and spirit of some medieval rouse, while heavy metal guitars and a synth-adorned middle section reaches a fully figured climax only seconds before it ends.
Combined, the first two tracks, the title track and “Black Trees” only hint at the deep influence ’80s tastemakers have on True Loves, whereas middle tracks “Sails” and “Same” seem beamed in from the era entirely. “Sails” is in the language of Depeche Mode and Soft Cell (“This violation/ Somehow doesn’t matter so much“), a trance group’s synth loop set to a sparse new wave beat, listing goth-industrial but danceable. “Same” is well, the same, mostly. Except the distorted piano appearing as the lights go low, the effect and ’80s affect replete with a wistful, oh-oh filled bridge as Heroux’s filtered vocals are pumped through what sounds like Robert Smith’s mic.
On the coin’s flip side, “No Love” (or at least its back half) is infused with late ’80s/early ’90s R&B, ringing a little hollow outside its chorus and horn line, but still funkier and looser than others, a slow-moving jam made to clap along to. Similarly, “Bring Us Closer Together” riffs extensively on pop chartbusters (of the Whitney Houston variety, let’s say) but in all other instances is a sort of soft electro-rock.
Little can be said about “Pulling Back,” since it’s a brief instrumental sketch, but “Hotel” has some promising moments embedded in its ghostly calls and symphonic strings. Ultimately, though, pulling as they do in opposing directions, competing and compartmentalized influences fracture True Loves. Lacking the bold sense of experimentation and stylistic synthesis of other albums, loaded heavy with hook and light on goods, too little of it is identifiably Hooray for Earth’s.
by Joe Clinkenbeard
Key Tracks: True Loves, Realize It’s Not the Sun, Not Love
