Review

Let me paint a picture.

It was spring or summer of 2017. I was homeschooled and as such didn't know very many people. My mom, however, did know a couple of other like-minded (read: usually very controlling) homeschool moms in the area, and decided to try and hook me up with this one kid (who I'll call J) who was about my age. We hung out whenever the moms would meet up, but most of the time when we were around each other, it was when I was dropped off at their house far outside the city limits. While it was close to a small suburban development, the lot felt very distinctly rural. Their house was right next to a lake, and surrounded by forest on one side and an open grassy lot on the other.

I wasn't a very outdoorsy or social person at the time, so I mostly kept to myself and went along with whatever unhinged antics J would get up to. When J was off playing PS4 games in his room and I didn't feel like watching, I often idly roamed the place, mostly spending time in the basement. It, like the rest of the house, was a bit run down. Graffiti adorned the walls, a mattress laid on the floor, and disused knick-knacks were scattered all over the place. It felt like no-one had been down there in years.

I never seemed to care, though. I often just sat there on the dingy mattress, staring into empty space, thinking about either nothing at all or brief sputters of "nonexistence would work just as well as this". Only a dying amber lamp kept me company.

When I listen to "I Could Live in Hope", even now, it still can mentally bring me back to that time when I felt near-absolute emptiness. The atmosphere of this record is just crushingly lonely, a natural result of bringing rock music to dirge-level tempos. The effect-laden production by Kramer also communicates a vast amount of space. Space between you and anyone else. Like you exist only in a void that stretches for miles.

The unique guitar tone also helps amplify that feeling in tracks like "Lazy" and "Lullaby". Especially "Lullaby". If I heard that track when I was in that basement so many years ago, I would've broken down in anguished, ugly sobs. That song is really the epitome of the empty kind of despair that plagued my mind for so many years.

The run of the last four tracks also shows a slow descent into... well... the worst outcome. If those stray thoughts got a foothold at the time, if I ever decided that things in my life back then were just far too much to bear...! ...Even now I still shiver at the thought. I hear a song like "Rope" and think that that could've been me, if my emotions were more of a visible presence in my mind, that is.

This record is haunting, the vocals are like comforting hugs offered to someone who's already made up their mind... but also showing a lack of drive to cross the event horizon. Never have I heard an album that's communicated emptiness so effectively, the kind of emptiness that leaves you going through life aimlessly and uncaringly, the kind of emptiness that keeps you from making big changes for better and for worse...

...and the kind of emptiness that would persist, long after I get called back upstairs, and long after I leave the run-down house that amplified it.

-- Ellie Hedge, 2025.12.8