Myrtle Beach, South Carolina natives Hundredth have a reputation for being stylistically unpredictable, originating with growly hardcore music on the first few releases, then taking the shoegaze route on the much-acclaimed Rare<\/i>, and then going electronic pop on Somewhere Nowhere<\/i>. So, on their sixth album Faded Splendor<\/i>, it comes as no surprise that they have changed yet again. <\/p>\n
This time, Hundredth explore modern post-punk while also dabbling in bits of other random styles that happen to capture their imagination along the way while developing these songs. <\/p>\n
Tracks like \u201cBlur,\u201d \u201cBlitz,\u201d and \u201cDark Side\u201d have the rush of post-punk, with dancy but intense rhythms and pop music catchiness. Hundredth have never been so hooky as they are on this record. This approach of hooks with bite makes Faded Splendor<\/i> supremely crave-worthy. <\/p>\n
Frontman Chadwick Johnson\u2019s vocals, which have been transforming and gradually opening up with every iteration of his band\u2019s transformation, has for the first time, found its unique personality. His vocals add a whole new dimension to Hundredth\u2019s music on Faded Splendor<\/i>. He has never sounded more confident, and the exuberance with which he exhibits this confidence is contagious, energizing the post-punk fire in the music even more.<\/p>\n
Johnson here is as fearless and inquisitive with his vocal performance as the band is with its music. \u201cWaste\u201d has a distinct feel of the Nineties hybridization of electronic and rock music, complete with Linkin Park-like record scratching sounds as Johnson embraces an appropriately apathetic vocal style from that period. \u201cDazzle,\u201d which sounds like a divine combination of country and dream pop, is full of shimmering acoustic guitars, where Johnson sings with a slight southern drawl, sounding completely in command, given the conflicting styles of the music. \u201cGlimmer,\u201d underneath its lush guitars, pulsing synths, and buoyant drums, is a catchy country song that you could line dance to, when you strip away its layers and add some fiddle. And Johnson does a great job aiding the listener to picture folks in cowboy hats moving their feet in synchrony to this song with his singing. <\/p>\n
At this point, it is to be expected that Hundredth are not going to settle down on a genre. But for them to be so damn good at something whose traces were all but absent in all of their prior work, is totally baffling. This is what happens when the perfect storm of genuine musical curiosity meets excellence in talent with a lot of guts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":35389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[11137],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-47285","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-hundredth","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47285","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\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=47285"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=47285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}