Hope | 2.9.23

Everyone has a mountain.  It might look like a molehill from the outside, but to that person, it’s a behemoth that they’ve been building or climbing for years.  It has gravity and weight, but anyone could walk by without noticing.

The Hope EP will be the 6th collection of songs we’ve released since 2010.  Our first collaboration built a foundation, and each EP has been the next stone we set on top.  

If you listen to the arc of our releases, you can hear how we’ve evolved as musicians and people.  The music has shifted from distorted-guitar-centric rock to an amalgam of styles – emphasizing prominent bass, tight drums, vintage synth textures, and church-choir-esque background vocals.  

The lyrical content also shows an evolution of sorts.  Equinox and Tin God have themes of injustice, fighting, loss, anger, and occasionally love…  Hearts on Fire is a meditation on death.  Hostage is about being trapped, unheard, and depressed.  Looking back is like looking at a 7-year cross-section of someone else’s life.  He’s young and angry, he loses some people, and he has to pause to reflect.  And then, for a little while, he feels alone and depressed.  

Hope is about breaking this negative cycle and creating a better future.  This has been the most powerful theme of my life lately.  For the Hostage EP,  I was depressed as hell while writing “Finish Line”, and felt completely unheard one night before writing “Filter out the Noise”, the new record is also a reflection of my life.  I’ve had some transformational experiences in recent years through the simple (but painful) act of admitting I was wrong about something – hence the new song “Say You Were Wrong.”  I started to be drawn to the spider as a “spirit guide” and tried to learn lessons about being patient, avoiding distractions, and shaping my own future through consistent work – this became the song “Threads.”  And lastly, I rediscovered how important my friends are.  I realized that community is one of the most important aspects of life and that a phone call to an old friend has the power to pull me out of a spiral and ground me.  This is the theme of the song “Hope.”

The Hope EP is about taking responsibility for our lives.  We can change the world with our actions.  We can improve our lives and make our communities stronger.  We just need to make better choices, admit our mistakes, take a breath, and get back to building our mountains one piece at a time.  Hope reflects where we’ve been, and it’s a stepping stone for where we’re headed.  It’s the next piece of our molehill.  

Thanks for listening.