Album Review :
Hopeless Passion - Everything You Ever Wanted
Band: Hopeless Passion
Album: Everything You Ever Wanted
Label: None
Reviewed by: Tyler Hess
Coming from what seems to be a musical hotbed lately in Fresno, CA, Hopeless Passion brings us what mostly amounts to a very rough cut of mostly pop-punk stylings, but with some twists that glean from hip hop and rock. This is a project that just screams “hey, we did this ourselves!” They are a two man show, with the percussion being done on the instrument that we call a computer, which leads to very simple beats and vocals that rarely (at least until the last four songs or so) go outside of a small, simple, basic pop-punk box. These recordings honestly remind me of some of the early work of bands like Last Tuesday, Curbsquirrels and Everyday Sunday, where you can see a bit of talent, some catchy melodies here and there, but the product is far from finished. If they had a talented producer and some time, they could definitely take things up a notch, but would need to become a lot more creative musically to even reach the level of a band like Slick Shoes. The mixing and mastering and all that technical gibberish needs to take a big leap for it to not be noticeably off. The different instruments (including vocals) just don’t always match up in volume, making it a bit difficult to stay fully focused on the song, rather than the production. Still, despite all of the amateurism that is involved here, the songs themselves aren’t a bad listen, in fact they can be pretty catchy.
Thematically, the songs start off being mostly about difficulties in relationships, because we all know that girls can be dumb and hard to understand for years at a time, at least until the right one comes along. There is little inspiration until the tenth track, Hilltop, which if nothing else on the record hits the spot, this one gives a bit more hope, with a nice edge to it that shows some of the grittier edge that we need a bit more of in the pop-punk realm.
If any of this sounds vaguely interesting, the nice thing is that I’m not the only one around here that gets to listen to free. Hopeless Passion has made the album available to anyone, simply as a means to get their name out and the hope that others will enjoy their music. You can download them for free here or here.
Track List:
- Close To Perfect
- Don’t Go
- Jekyll & Hyde
- Alright
- I’m Sorry
- Interlude
- Something
- Slipping By
- Wasting Time
- Hilltop
- I Couldn’t Come Up with Creative Name So I Put a fallout boy length title to say this is greath ish
- Tonight
- Remembering You
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