Purveyors of the new psych-rock scene, Hopewell have been blending vintage fuzz pedal jams with their early space rock and shoegaze roots for over a decade, their 2001 full-length, ‘The Curved Glass’, being the perfect, noisy bridge between the epic psychedelia of 90s acts like Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev and a newer generation of bands that include Dungen, Dead Meadow and Serena Maneesh. Their sixth album, Good Good Desperation effortlessly slips from cacophonous dueling piano passages, à la Stravinsky, to the Hammond-driven roots rock of The Basement Tapes, while creating something uniquely its own. ‘Good Good Desperation’ inhabits a world where The Album is not a lost art, and invites listeners on a journey from dirty downtown New York City scenes to blissful Californian deserts.
In between tours and throughout 2008 Hopewell set out to make a record that more captured their live sound. It was during this time that Jonathan Donahue invited the band to play a 30-minute segment of music on his WDST Woodstock radio program in upstate New York. For this show the group composed a structured improvisational piece, a composition loosely dubbed “The Opus,” which would become the progenitor for many of the songs on the album to come. Immersed in heavy doses of bands like This Heat, Pink Floyd, Roxy Music and the perennial favorite, Jane’s Addiction, Hopewell booked time in local Brooklyn studios Seizures Palace and Seaside Lounge (home to great records from bands like Akron Family, Angels of Light and Psychic Ills) and set about recording their own work.
‘Good Good Desperation’ could easily be considered Hopewells Meddle or Tago Mago chapter in a lengthy history that includes countless singles and compilations, and opening for My Bloody Valentine on their recent reunion tour, working in the past with producer Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, MGMT, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah), recording a Peel session live at Abbey Road Studio, and playing Reading and Leeds Festivals — all without the help of a large label, manager or booking agent.
With ‘Good Good Desperation’, Hopewells journey continues in a grassroots, homespun sort of way — albeit its their own noisy path — and as they learned after their negative brush with the mainstream, they wouldnt want it any differently.