The continuing fall out from Mercury Rev continues. After The Silent League we’ve got Hopewell, also known as Jason Russo, who found himself involved with the Rev’s decade defining album Deserters Songs. After touring the globe, he struck out by himself to focus on his own band, the aforementioned Hopewell. This is the follow-up to their debut album and see’s them ditch Rev supremo Dave Fridmann from production duties and sign up Bill Racine, known for his works with Mates of State and Rouge Wave. Although, it seems, that anyone involved with the Rev end up sounding eerily similar, Beautiful Targets is more mainstream than anything they’d craft, but it’s uplifting tales of love and loss are stirring and imaginative.

We’ve first got to mention the sheer size of the recordings. The songs are layered in sounds and instruments, each of them seemingly vying for your attention and trying to out do the next one. The opening acoustic guitars of In Full Bloom lull you into a false sense of security, it’s only when the strings, guitars and Russo’s soaring vocals kick in, that you know you’re in for something truly grand. There seems to be a whole host of influences infused into the mix, from Glam rock of the 70’s to the grand guitar sounds of Coldplay and U2. Russo is aiming high. There also seems to be a broken social commentary running through the songs. “All this science making us the same” is one of the tags from In Full Bloom, an oddly haunting comment on 21st Century culture. All Angels Road sounds like it could have fallen off any of The Dears albums, the angular guitars and a mass of energy all crammed into one song, Russo’s voice taking on more of a rasp, whilst Windy Day (Giant Dancers) is a soaring song of epic proportions. It swirls around a whole host of strings and yet there’s a blast of guitars weaving in and out, dragging the song kicking and screaming through it’s lifetime. Monolith is another highlight, this time aping Of Montreal with the sheer Glam nature of it, the Bowie-esque twitch of the vocals and oddly post-modern tale of atheism.

It’s this grand vision though that, in the end, is it’s undoing. The constantly shifting nature of the influences mean it can leave you feeling a little out of breath. You’re trying to find all the hooks and references hidden deep in the mix and it becomes distracting. You can no longer concentrate on the songs itself. There’s also moments, like Over & Over and Afterglow which stray a little too close to the Coldplay / U2 stadium rock fraternity for comfort. Those boys really should patent their guitar sound, they’d make millions. Well, more millions. In the end, this is a massive album for a newish singer/songwriter. It’s now up to him where he wants to go. He can aim for the Stadiums or go back, listen to Deserters Songs and soak up more of that atmosphere and darkness. Then we really would have a band to celebrate.
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Links
Hopewell [official site] [myspace]