“captur[es] the absurd change of focus required from athletes after calling it a day (ie. going from spending every minute optimising your running/kicking/punching and feeling existentially justified, to having nothing to do except feel worthless and existentially exposed)”

This self-titled follow-up is apparently the project’s swan song, which certainly adds a bit of weight to the boom-and-bust boxing tales Mrs. Hopewell favours. And boom-and-bust this certainly is, with the tagline to the seven-song release reading: “3 fighters, 2 suicide attempts, and 1 crate of military-grade morphine tucked in the back of a warehouse in Los Angeles”. Doesn’t get much more of a rollercoaster ride than that.

Although, if this is a rollercoaster ride then it takes place on a long and confusing track where all the climbs are in the past. Opener ‘Hitman’ sets the tone, telling of a retired pugilist who’s dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s of his life as if it’s almost done.

“I hung up the gloves once I
Told you I loved you
I called up my exes I told them the same
Take out two bottles of gin and vermouth
I fold up my note after signing my name
Tuck it into my pocket and twist off the caps
I’ll blackout one last time tonight”

However, no matter how much he teeters, the life doesn’t end there. The closing of the track finds him vomiting the poison and tearing up the note and dreaming of his love. ‘You Came to Me in a Lucid Dream’ follows with the closest we come to an upward spin, the narrator deciding that a hard life is better than no life (“It wells up / And pulls me down / Drags me out / Kicks me around / But it’s better than nothing / Than being underground”), and ‘Seven Month Twitch’ is a song on pining for old acquaintances, no matter how risky or dangerous (“You’re an itch I need to scratch”). ‘TBS… Very Funny’ sees doubt and regret return, a feeling of ever-expanding emptiness which colours everything it’s hollow shade of grey.

“Alone again and what’s the use
I’ll never love and that’s the truth
I’ll never find someone who gets me through
Did I ever love a single thing
A harpsichord or minor things
A game a man a drink or something else”

‘The Legend of the Pittsburgh Kid’ is flat and sad and sapped of life, the narrator drowning in a blend of nostalgia and regret, and ‘Dealer finds him trying to escape through distance or distraction or narcotic deadening. His view of the person he loves is so entwined with drugs it’s difficult to tell whether his longing is genuine or linked with further self-destruction, and the closing track does little to clear this up. ‘We’ll Win Cos We’re On God’s Side’, full of promises and relapses and remedies, is all about giving up – be it on drugs or life or even just giving up on the quitting itself, embracing the romantic tragedy of a hero careering towards the ground in flames.

‘”I promise Lou this will be my last hit and then I’m done for good
I told my baby I’m off this stuff
Our deal is understood”

“But maybe just one more”

“No, I am an American hero”‘

Fans of Alex G, Elvis Depressedly and The Hotelier should be mourning the end of Mrs. Hopewell’s lo-fi emo-pop. Take solace by grabbing the album now from the Mrs. Hopewell Bandcamp page.

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Musically, the album falls somewhere between the bummed-out melancholy of Alex G/Elvis Depressedly and the angsty emo of acts like Molly Drag.  The record seems to grow in energy and desperation as it progresses, as if veering toward some climax. Opener ‘It Was You, Charlie’ is mostly acoustic, but develops in the second half into something more rocky. From here, elements of emo and punk are introduced, from the sunny-sounding ‘Holly and I are Soup Snakes’, to the indie rock of ‘Sugar Sugar’ and fuzzy noise of ‘What Went Wrong?’, before the 90s pop of ‘Korine’ leads into the slow-building closer, ‘On The Day You Knocked Out Jeffries’, a track which spirals into a triumphant post-rock conclusion.

All of the tracks are relatively short and snappy, allowing Nicastro to explore his ideas without the ever slipping into self-indulgence and losing the listener to boredom. This is no mean feat when taking on the kinds of ideas on display here. Nicastro himself is a boxer, and the pugilistic theme which runs through the record proves to be far more than an amusing novelty. One reading is made clear with a quote from Joyce Carol Oates on the Mrs. Hopewell Bandcamp blurb:

“I can entertain the proposition that life is a metaphor for boxing—for one of those bouts that go on and on, round following round, jabs, missed punches, clinches…and your opponent so evenly matched it’s impossible to see your opponent is you”

However, while this life-as-an-endless-fight-vs-yourself idea rings true, there is another, more prominent dimension which pertains to the ‘facing the void’ part of Nicastro’s description. Boxing is a brutal, dangerous sport (up to 20% of participants will suffer from the titular neurodegenerative disease), in which every Mayweather is balanced by thousands of names we’ll never know. It’s essentially a lottery where buying a ticket involves getting smacked repeatedly around the head and neck and body, and if you are lucky enough to win you get promoted to a bigger draw where larger, more powerful men do the same.

But, importantly, the intensive training, violence-related adrenaline and short-lived glory of victory provide a sense of purpose, which is pretty much our only response so far to the dreaded Existential Fear that keeps us up at night. That is, we’re aware that we are small, insignificant and certain to die, and thus adopt Void-Filling Strategies which may not be good for our physical and emotional wellbeing yet help us forget for a while. So really, when Nicastro sings about boxing, he could easily be singing about writing novels, or having sex with beautiful people, or a long-term heroin habit. This idea is set out in the opening track, where the narrator is feeling something deeper and far more painful than punches:    

“They say ‘jake you got an iron chin’
but fuck won’t you please tell me when
this sickness boiling up in me
will let go and finally set me free?”

The kicker with the best Void-Filling Strategies is sudden cessation makes things ten times worse, presumably why so many sports stars end up in such a bad way after retirement. ‘Sugar Sugar’ gets at this idea (“so i’ll hang em up and put em down and move it away/hit the bottle weave and waddle and black out on the way”) and ‘What Went Wrong?’ serves as the post-meltdown confusion, with voices emanating from the off-kilter instrumentation like ghosts of a halcyon past before the final refrain, “I don’t know where I went wrong, I don’t know what went wrong.” These two tracks work well in tandem, capturing the absurd change of focus required from athletes after calling it a day (ie. going from spending every minute optimising your running/kicking/punching and feeling existentially justified, to having nothing to do except feel worthless and existentially exposed).

The Infinite Jest-referencing ‘James Orin Incandenza’ is the song which ties all of these ideas together, and tells the eagle-eyed listener that an album about boxing is in fact so much more. Aside from David Foster Wallace confronting all of the above issues better than anyone, Incandenza is applicable and interesting for a number of reasons. For one, the heavy-drinking obsessive film-maker/wraith has both his sons enrolled in serious-level sport, and indeed his eldest crashes into compulsive womanising and depression after an injury ends his football career. What’s more, Incandenza’s father was a failed actor, an “anti-Brando”, which sits nicely with the heavy On The Waterfront references across the record. It’s the sort of inclusion which transforms an entertaining album into something more meaningful, allowing nerds to think too much and write excessively-long, rambling pieces about existential voids.

You can buy Dementia Pugilistica now via the Mrs. Hopewell Bandcamp page.

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On first inspection, you might think Sorority Noise are pushing the same things as the majority of other emo bands. That is, isolation and loneliness in the aftermath of a doomed relationship, pulling no punches in bringing forth every worry and aching pain to present to the listener. You know the deal, heartbroken, hard-done-by Hero sings/shouts/screams about the injustice of his life after Pretty Love takes up with Slimy Evil Guy. This type of teenage, I’m-so-misunderstood melancholy is doubly effective, providing a sense of connection to anyone unlucky enough to find themselves in the throes of an adolescent heartbreak, while proving immensely gratifying to everyone else in the way that manufactured grief is always gratifying – a distracting and digestible simulacrum of suffering, a romantic and wistful removed-from-Real-Life pain, like watching an episode of The OC with your name in the main credits.

But the thing is, anyone listening closely will soon discover that Sorority Noise are different. What sounds on the surface like the age-old angst record is in fact far deeper, the band managing to subvert the genre tropes to make something far more interesting and nuanced. And what’s even more interesting is how Boucher & co. manage to do this. The answer to rising above self-absorbed, why-have-you-forsaken-me pity turns out to be an increased focus on the self. Increasing the duration and intensity of this self examination actually eradicates, perhaps paradoxically, any sense of self-indulgence. However, as much as it makes for more rewarding art, eschewing Hollywood melancholy in favour of exploring Real Life comes at a cost. The pain here is far from superficial, the stories not tied into neat bows of happy endings, the anxiety and depression not some shallow puddle but a floorless ocean full of dark shapes.

The narrator’s pain manifests as addiction, a theme made clear on opener ‘Blissth’ (“Let me be the drug that you use to fall in love/The heroin that keeps you warm enough”) which persists across the album. ‘Corrigan’, with verses almost akin to Spook Houses, details the defeated-but-still-in-love vibe of traditional emo, and ‘Nolsey’ follows a similar vein (“I know you’ll never love me/I’ll pretend that you love me/You’ll always be the reason I stay clean). It is over these next few tracks that you feel Boucher comes to a gradual epiphany, where the focus shifts onto himself and it becomes apparent that failed relationships and addiction are effect rather than cause, symptoms of something deeper and more personal. ‘Art School Wannabee’ sees this idea reached:

“Maybe I’m my own greatest fear,
maybe I’m just scared to admit that
I might not be as dark as I think
Maybe I’m not the person that I never wanted to be”

By ‘Using’, which sees a relapse into guilt and vicodin, the message of the record becomes clear. The positivity here is not based on circumstance but instead in the will of the narrator, understanding that depression is not a binary healthy/sick (functional/broken) deal and emotional wellbeing can be pursued even from what might feel like rock bottom. The album is about learning to accept bad things without ever surrendering to them:

“I’ve started loving again
I’ve stopped wishing I was dead
learned to love myself before anyone else
become more than just a burden
I know I’m more than worthy of your time”

“I’ve gotten better, at getting better.
I’ve gotten better, at being me.”

Flipping the focus from the outward, uncontrollable suffering of circumstance to the inward, controllable and conquerable suffering of your own feelings and behaviour, Sorority Noise aim higher than your average emo band. They, along with bands like The Hotelier (whose album we never managed to cover but recommend highly) are making music instilled with a higher sense of purpose and value, the kind all artists should aim for. Why settle for comfortable suffering when there is a chance of painful healing?

Joy, Departed is out now on Topshelf Records and you can grab it via the Sorority Noise Bandcamp page (including some nice vinyl).

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