WORTH A LOOK?: ****
OUT: now
TRACKLIST: Voices; Suffer; Fractured; Slave To Your Love; All I Have To Give; Liar; Somebody; Numb; Redemption; White Horses; Darkest Hour
‘When we started making the album, we knew we wanted to give it everything. We decided to confront our demons, excavate the pain and show you it all. It was difficult, at times impossible, but once it started to come together, we felt like nothing could stop us. We knew we were making something special. Something we were going to be immensely proud of,’ says lead singer Theo Hutchcraft.
- Read on for reasons including where to see Hurts on tour next year including London gig details
When we made Redemption (watch and listen below) our song of the month for August describing it as a ‘dark, dramatic pop delight’ we said it was also the best thing that the band had done since Wonderful Life, the song that broke them across the world.
Writing on Facebook on Friday (4/9/20), the day the album was released, Hutchcraft says: ‘I feel proud and I feel happy. Today is a day I really wasn’t sure would come. The early days of making this album were tumultuous and terrifying. Personally, it was one of the darkest, most difficult periods of my life. I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t function and I could barely feel. I didn’t know if there would even be another album. But time moved on, things got easier and slowly I found my way back towards music. Eventually finding great solace and catharsis in it. As I always do.’
Having had Faith on repeat since its release, we think it’s the new ballads Darkest Hour and All I Have To Give that are most impressive and will appeal to those drawn in by song-of-the-year candidate Redemption.
Voices and Suffer have been previous songs of the week for us and elsewhere we are drawn to the spartan, Prince-like experimentation of Fractured and the gorgeous melodic 80s synths of White Horses where the mere mention of the word ‘chauffeur’ conjures up images of Duran Duran at their most interesting.
Multi-instrumentalist Adam Anderson adds: ‘FAITH is a collection of songs written during a personal crisis which is being released into a world in crisis. They are songs about isolation, desperation, pain, doubt, sadness and of course, faith. Songs that sing from the DNA of who we are. Every moment you hear was handled with the utmost care and attention. We’ve lived with and loved these songs for the last 18 months but now they’re yours. I hope you can find comfort and shelter in them like I did.
‘Everything I have ever wanted to say is in this music. I am so proud of what we have made. I am so proud of Theo for the incredible words he has written and the depths he went to to find them. I am proud of the both of us for finding a resilience I wasn’t sure we had left.
’I dedicate the album to anyone who is in pain, suffering, isolated, confused, lost. We are all exposed in one way or another. Nobody is impervious. Life is beautiful. Distress is cyclical. Sometimes the clouds are so heavy we cannot see the light beyond them. But it is always there.
’Never give up.’
George Michael famously said of faith that you ‘gotta have it’ – he wasn’t wrong.
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