Hope for Agoldensummer
Every year I hope that there will be at least one record that I'll fall in love with. I pine for the kind of record I'll want to put in the player every time I sense that I'm around speakers or a pair of headphones; the kind of record that I'll wear out from constant abuse and wind up buying again and again; the kind of record I want to give everyone I know as a gift for no other special occasion than just being alive. It's rare that such a record comes along and usually at the end of the year I'm left making year-end lists and voting in polls for albums that were great, or fun, or inventive but not quite life-changingly beautiful. There aren't many records that make me want to re-evaluate my beliefs about music and about people, and even fewer that manage to transcend all the mess of a music industry full of empty promise promo sheets and groundswells of hype. Thankfully as the year draws to a crisp wintery close, I've found a record that does. Hope For Agoldensummer hails from the deep south and the music they make together oozes the rustic, porch-swing spirituality that one might expect, but with uncommon grace and warmth. It would be easy to play in cliches and revive the jug band for the Converse and hoodie-wearing indie set, and someone somewhere is no doubt trying to get that to work-but that's not what Hope is about. Principal songwriter and free spirit Claire Campbell anchors the group with a soaring, soulful voice that is comforting even as it's aching. Her sister, Page, harmonizes and occasionally takes the lead with a deep voice so strong yet so nearly ready to break that I find it impossible not to want to sing along just to make sure that the songs keep going. And while the voices and the words are undoubtedly the stars, the accompaniment of cello, slide guitar, accordion, and a simple brushed drum kit is sparse but so incredibly perfect that it makes me wonder how the songs could have been written any other way. Drummer Jamie Shepard's enormous bass drum gives the songs a deep, dusty and hollow heartbeat of a rhythm while the simple glockenspiel melodies and spaghetti western guitars give the otherwise authentic, down home atmosphere a hint of something bigger. This is family-made music, right down to the honest-to-goodness sisters who sit and sing and bring audiences to tears, and it follows in that vividly southern tradition of families gathering around to sing and commiserate and tell stories set to song.
Heart of Art is a slow, almost mournful album full of songs about loss and regret and shame and yet it winds up being celebratory in its belief that music is strong enough medicine to cure any ill. Like an album of murder ballads where the only cause of death is a broken heart, the record keeps finding new ways to pull at the deep, recessed, cynical heartstrings until the only way to beat Hope is to join them. When people who never appear to suffer try to craft songs that are uplifting and hopeful, it always seems too glossy and too strong to mean anything. These songs acknowledge the pain and the anger and the hurtful, hateful things that people can do, but somehow the songs carry on, the musicians carry on, and as a listener, I carry on because I believe in where we are all headed. When the whole band sings "we come together/ and we work/ and we fall apart/ I play music because I'm in love with silence and sound," during the triumphant album closer, "Laying Down the Gun," it's impossible to resist the thought, the hope that music really is a magical tonic for all that ails you. I'm finding new songs to fall in love with every time I listen to this record, and new, unexpected moments of clarity and insight. Most of all, I've found the record this year that reaffirms my faith in music, my love for music; it's the record that reconnects me with other people through the simple tradition of song, and for that I'll be forever thankful.
