I don\u2019t know about you, but I get the feeling the world could use a little inspiration right now.\u00a0 It\u2019s no accident that the word on everyone\u2019s lips these days is \u201cchange\u201d — the undercurrent being, \u201cwe aren\u2019t happy with the way things are.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the thinking artist, times like these are rich with challenge.\u00a0 Superficiality won\u2019t cut it, and you can\u2019t inspire an audience as jaded as today\u2019s without first acknowledging the cold hard reality they are knee-deep in already.\u00a0 So how do you give them both the truth, and hope?<\/p>\n
You do it by making an album as inspirational, aspirational, and all-out magnificent as Hello Hurricane<\/i>, which I\u2019m ready to call, right here on the second day of November, the album of the year. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Much more than Switchfoot\u2019s rather disjointed, experimental 2006 disc Oh! Gravity.<\/i>, Hello Hurricane<\/i> feels like the true successor to 2005\u2019s masterful Nothing Is Sound.\u00a0 <\/i>The bold, expansive, Zeppelin- and U2-influenced alt-rock of this San Diego quintet — Jon Foreman (vocals\/guitar), Tim Foreman (bass), Chad Butler (drums), Jerome Fontamillas (keys\/guitar) and Drew Shirley (guitar) — is as propulsive and compelling as ever, while their examinations of loneliness and resilience and discovering hope amidst despair have only grown more sophisticated and involving.<\/p>\n
The disc opens with throbbing bass over skittering, martial-cadenced drums, joined by rippling, echoing guitar and finally keening vocals streaming in over the top — which is to say, \u201cNeedle And Haystack Life\u201d owes a lot to Joshua Tree<\/i>-era U2, but of course that\u2019s nothing but a compliment if you can pull it off, and they do, in spades.<\/p>\n
Initial single \u201cMess Of Me\u201d ups the emotional ante further with a burning tempo and slashing riffs as Jon Foreman wails over the top.\u00a0 The music is driving, furious, cathartic, and matched perfectly to Foreman\u2019s lyric about addiction and degradation and ultimately, channeling desperation into a drive for redemption (\u201cI want to live the rest of my life alive\u201d).<\/p>\n
Balance is recovered in \u201cYour Love Is A Song,\u201d a chiming midtempo number that wraps love and belief and the act of making music up in a single healing moment of beauty.\u00a0 Which in its own way makes the perfect segue into the eminently heavy (and concert singalong-worthy) \u201cThe Sound (John M. Perkins\u2019 Blues).\u201d\u00a0 Over apocalyptic guitar-drum thunder, Foreman leads one pounding chorus after another of \u201cThis is THE SOUND \/ Of\u2026etc.\u201d before quoting Mr. Perkins himself thusly: \u201cLove is the final fight.\u201d\u00a0 And there\u2019s the very essence of Switchfoot, a knockout hook that leads you to an accessible yet quite complex central idea, rife with layers of meaning both philosophical and — if you care to go there — theological.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
\u201cEnough To Let Me Go\u201d employs a gorgeous little acoustic riff as the foundation for an extraordinarily mature love song (\u201cDo you love me enough \/ To let me go\u2026\u201d and, in a superb, Bono-esque falsetto, \u201cBreathe it in and let it go \/ Every breath you take is not yours to own\u201d).\u00a0 The heaviness returns with \u201cFree,\u201d a pulsing, thrumming, arena-sized rocker in which Foreman again compares life as a human to being trapped inside a prison cell, where freedom can only be achieved through transcendence.\u00a0 The song finishes nicely with a string section picking up the melody, one of a couple of places where strings are used effectively as texture.<\/p>\n
The title track starts out with a simple riff and an airy chant — the veritable calm before the storm — until the rhythm section locks in underneath and the sense of urgency begins to build.\u00a0 When verse first hits chorus, \u201cHello Hurricane\u201d does what any great guitar-based pop-rock song should do \u2013 it explodes.\u00a0 Beyond the propulsive music, though, it\u2019s a song that summarizes the entire album in a meaningful way: \u201cHello hurricane – you\u2019re not enough \/ Hello hurricane – you can\u2019t silence my love \/ I\u2019ve got doors and windows boarded up \/ All your dead-end fury is not enough \/ You can\u2019t silence my love.\u201d\u00a0 The rest of the lyric is equally remarkable, the topic sentence of an artistic statement that works on every level — music, lyrics, meaning, impact.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
As for the remainder of the album… for brevity\u2019s sake, let\u2019s just say that there\u2019s no drop-off.\u00a0 The dreamy, soaring ballad \u201cAlways\u201d melts right into the churning, thrashing \u201cBullet Soul,\u201d with its rocket-fueled guitar and Foreman\u2019s hyper-emotive vocals (\u201cAre you ready to GO?!\u201d).\u00a0 Later \u201cSing It Out\u201d — another ode the power of song to uplift and change — achieves the same kind of dramatic build and stately beauty as \u201cOn Fire,\u201d one of the band\u2019s best- loved ballads.<\/p>\n
Steady-on-to-the-horizon closer \u201cRed Eyes\u201d finishes with an abstract, compelling soundscape that recalls U2\u2019s bravura melding of studio experimentation with transcendent music on Achtung Baby.<\/i> \u00a0And indeed, from the thrumming build of \u201cNeedle and Haystack Life\u201d to the buzz-saw guitar of \u201cBullet Soul,\u201d the U2-isms are plentiful, with the most obvious lyrical nod coming in the opening line of the title track: \u201cI\u2019ve been watching the skies \/ They\u2019ve been turning blood red.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Switchfoot doesn\u2019t just admire U2\u2019s musical and lyrical motifs, though — they share that group\u2019s fundamental ambition, which is to say, they want their music to matter. \u00a0Hello Hurricane<\/i> is an album that, even as it\u2019s transitioning from head-banging power metal to string-decorated ballads, makes a cohesive, inspirational statement.\u00a0 Jon Foreman himself sums it up like this on switchfoot.com: \u201cThe storms of this life shatter our plans. They tear through our world and destroy our hopes and dreams\u2026 Hello Hurricane<\/i> is an attempt to sing into the storm. Hello Hurricane<\/i> is a declaration: you can’t silence my love.\u201d<\/p>\n
And that is where Switchfoot succeeds in becoming more than just a rock band. <\/p>\n
Because the reality is that it would be easy for an openly Christian band like Switchfoot to make their art inaccessible to someone like me.\u00a0 I have no doubt that when Jon Foreman says \u201clove,\u201d a certain segment of his listeners hear \u201cfaith in Jesus Christ.\u201d\u00a0 But he never uses those words in these songs; he never puts up barriers between the band and those in their audience who are of other faiths, or none.\u00a0 In a world beset with conflicts rooted in religious differences, what could be more meaningful than a very public demonstration that it\u2019s possible to remain true to one\u2019s own faith without excluding anyone who might believe differently?\u00a0 <\/p>\n
That\u2019s part of what makes Switchfoot a great band, and what makes Hello Hurricane<\/i> a great album.\u00a0 Because right about now, we could all use a little inspiration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":30124,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7886],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-41763","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-switchfoot","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41763"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41763"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}