Hope Of The States - 'The Lost Riots' (Sony)
4/5
By: Toby L
Wily ponces. Hope of the States are a grimy, middle-class lot - they've only gone and dreamt up the concept of making orchestral post-rock, that most beard-wrenching of musical genres, a commercially viable form.
Clever bastards, more like then. Because they've succeeded.
Even before the surfacing of their long-awaited debut album 'The Lost Riots', the reception to the expansive six-piece's first widespread single 'Enemies/Friends' was overwhelming enough to propel the Chichester sextet to the top-30. Pardon - a band whose nearest contemporaries are Godspeed You Black Emperor! nestling in the top-40 single-charts after only one limited-edition single (the elegiac, epic piano-led 'Black Dollar Bills', also included herein)? And from Chichester? It was, prior to HOTS, unthinkable.
Even more impossible to predict would have been the trauma that laced the recording of the record. During the making of this ambitious twelve-tracker, guitarist and founding-member Jimmi Lawrence hanged himself. Yet, somehow, commendably, winningly, the band found the heart to finish the work, one since billed as one of the most important artistic exertions in 2004. It is.
'The Lost Riots' is also a beautifully harrowing, dynamic and intriguing invention. Through the vocal guidance of Sam Herlihy's continuously gravelly yearn, the band turn in dashings of new-wave folk-classical that commonly commands bold string-parts, ridiculously huge, overpowering choruses ('The Red, The White, The Black, The Blue' - the biggest-sounding, most unlikely hit-single we may ever hear) and wondrous, sweeping Ken Thomas production that notches the whole product into an arching, enveloping aural landscape shrouded in as much noble joy as aching misery.
Anyone fortunate enough to be accustomed to the band's equally excelling live-stature will recognise much of the content here - the grand, eerie, instrumental-moodswings entrance of 'The Black Amnesias', the Celtic-cum-country violin and stomp of 'George Washington', and the depresso-macabre piano of 'Me Ves Y Sufres' (hearing Herlihy agonise the line 'I ain't got no good in me for everybody' makes for a truly rending few seconds). Additionally, however, there is even more euphoric matter than we bargained for - the acoustic twanging of 'Nehemiah', an organ-backed 'Goodhorsehymn', and the bow-out of an intoxicating '1776', the bearer of a cacophony of harps in its magical, dying embers.
Rich with the rapt, eager-eyed and learned accomplishment that immediately segregates the outfit from nigh-on all their present scene-purveyors, in 'The Lost Riots', Hope of the States have managed to survive hype, bizarre genre-fusing and tragic passing to deliver one of the most mesmerising releases on the alt-calendar. And, most enticingly, all this is done with more than a just a smidgeon of hope for working upon and extending the mould to searing new highs in impending packages.
Artists in this article: Hope Of The States
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