MY VIEW
Music: 'The Lost Riots' by Hope of the States

By Joshua Huff
Special to The Advertiser

The Verdict: THE RATINGS 5 — Outstanding: Add it to your collection now. A must-have. 4 — Great: Buy it or rent it — definitely listen to it. 3 — Good: Worth listening to despite some flaws. 2 — Fair: Unless you're a fan of the group or singer, don't bother. 1 — Poor: Save your money (and your ears).

Release: Oct. 5 in the United States (released June 7 worldwide)

Style: Post-rock/rock.

Rewind: Track No. 1, "The Black Amnesias"; Track No. 2, "Enemies/Friends"; Track No. 6, "Black Dollar Bills."

Skip: Track No. 7, "George Washington"; Track No. 10, "Nehemiah."

My view: Over the past couple of years, "post-rock" has found a bit of popularity among listeners. Led by groups such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Mogwai, post-rock sounds like classical music done with modern "rock" instruments. Songs usually begin softly, led by a piano and/or violins, which are met with drums and numerous guitars that add speed and volume to the songs until they reach magnificent crescendos and eventually drop back to the almost nonexistent levels of sound that they started from.

Hope of the States, from Chichester, England, was pinned by British magazines like Q and NME to become the first "post-rock" band to find mainstream success, claiming that Hope of the States crammed all of the greatness of post-rock music into four- or five-minute opuses. The band had put out only a few singles at that point.

Fast-forward a few years to last summer. The band finally released its debut "The Lost Riots" to the globe June 7 (though the album was only released in the United States on Oct. 5).

"The Lost Riots" kicks off with "The Black Amnesias." The song begins with an acoustic guitar riff and e-bowed guitars and stringed instruments. The drums kick in, and the song builds tempo, eventually reaching a frenetic level. This song almost single-handedly justifies the praise the band has gotten. Surely this band can carry through on the promise of bringing post-rock to the masses, right?

Almost. The band floors the listener with the song "Black Dollar Bills," a gorgeous, piano-led song that eventually meets up with a flurry of magnificently controlled guitar feedback chaos and strings.

Unfortunately, the production on the album is flawed. The "quiet" parts of songs aren't very soft, and the "loud" parts don't contrast enough with the more subtle moments. Perhaps this was supposed to be the breakthrough radio record and it was recorded as such. Many bands add "compression" (which makes all parts of a song sound as if they are the same volume, essentially ridding the song of crescendos and decrescendos) to their albums in order to make them sound better for radio format.

Singer Samuel Herlihy's voice also leaves a bit to be desired. Such songs as "George Washington" and "Nehemiah" suffer greatly from the nasal, almost obnoxious voice of Herlihy.

Hope of the States isn't in danger of being called a bad band, and is, in fact, quite promising. If it can fix the two major problems of "The Lost Riots," it will indeed become a major player on the world stage. Until then, even the most avid post-rock listeners will admit that while "The Lost Riots" is a good album and great debut, they'd rather listen to albums by Do Make Say Think and Explosions in the Sky.

Joshua Huff is a senior at Moanalua High School. Have a CD you want to review? Reach Island Life deputy editor Dave Dondoneau at ddondoneau@honoluluadvertiser.com.