Album Review: Hundred Reasons - 'Glorious Sunset'
With instant classics and expansive epics abound, there’s plenty of reasons you should listen to Glorious Sunset — a hundred of them actually!
It’s a pleasure to call Glorious Sunset the comeback album for Hundred Reasons. Hailing primarily from Hampshire, Hundred Reasons have been a band longer than half of the writers on this site have been alive, and the gap between this, their fifth studio album, and its predecessor Quick The Word, Sharp The Action, can almost legally drink in this country — in fact, if they were a German band, the 16 year old gap could happily buy and guzzle some German Pilsners. A sixteen-year-old gap between albums, for some bands, could easily be a death sentence — in this case, however, it’s a return to form: and what a triumphant return indeed.
Sure, the album’s a little mellower than something ripped from the back catalogue. It’s lost a little of the intensity — there’s a little less angst, a little less animosity, a little less anger. But, in return, there’s just a little more warmth, a little more wholesomeness to the whole affair, and that’s never a bad thing — just different. And, as you press play on opener and title track Glorious Sunset, and the gentle electronic intro steadily builds into anthemic (if gentler) rock, you can’t help but bask in the band’s maturity. There’s pain there, and grief, and there’s undoubtedly raw, unfiltered emotion, but instead of bleeding out, a sanguine track wallowing in despair, it comes across as a celebration. A heart-breaking, poignant and passionate celebration that just so happens to also be stadium-ready, and the perfect introduction to a band that shouldn’t really need one.
But, quite obviously, an album is so much more than the opener — so let’s get into the rest of it.
The whole thing just flows so well. The deeply personal slides effortlessly into the more inconsequential, and yet the tracks hold onto their urgency. Second track New Glasses — named both for the band’s lyrical anagnorisis as well as guitarist Larry Hibbitt simply just getting some new eyewear — is just as instantly classic, the refrain of ‘You’re only gonna get tonight’ both a warning on the studio version and an invitation to go crazy live; So So Soon, meanwhile, is almost quintessential indie rock, flirting between aggression and easy-to-pick-up lyrics as the sibilance serenades your musical sensibilities.
Elsewhere, Replicate — about trying to get it right yet failing to be good enough — offers glimpses of beauty. The soulful tune, piano lines and even a string section running almost tear-jerkingly through its three and a half minute run time, is as expansive as anything the band’s ever put out and is practically the definition of more than the sum of its parts; if ever a song was going to get phone torches swaying, then it’s this one.
There’s still a little bit of vitriol though, don’t worry. Right There With You, just past the half-way mark, let’s slip a little of the frustrations plaguing the band — there’s still a little bit of levity to the tune no compared to HundredReasons of two decades ago, sure, but this time it’s mired, shrouded in darkness, and basically guaranteed to be a favourite live, both for the adoring crowd and the conquering champions up on stage. The venom is just as present in closer Wave Form, although the band are a little more diplomatic about it. It’s direct — there’s no ambiguity to Colin Doran’s cries of “it’s not alright/ that you don’t give me more/ for crying out loud”, despondent and disdainful at the same time — but it’s also deeply honest, and lens more into the introspective than it does the hate.
It’s a fantastic album, one only helped by how long people have waited for it -- whether they knew it was possible or not. And, with a string of long-awaited shows over the next two weeks — postponed for a year due to, you guessed it, COVID-19 — as well as currently being one of the biggest bands announced for the iconic 2000trees in Cheltenham, they’re only going to go from strength to strength.
It’s good to have you back.
Words by James O’Sullivan
