In all five songs, the intensity and purpose that grounded their previous work is stripped away, leaving bare sheets of sentimentality.
[Listen & Purchase] One thing you could say about Hammock is that they are unwilling to compromise. This distinction can be good or bad, depending on your tolerance for the band’s sound, but it’s pretty clear at this point in their career they’re not going to change directions in search of demotic appeal. This has served Hammock well so far, basically guaranteeing a healthy supply of fans who love melodramatic shoegaze.
While not quite campy, Hammock’s music does have some qualities of campy music – excesses and imperfections that are integral to the art’s allure. To the uninitiated, Hammock’s bombast might seem maudlin and affected, but I have always found it a charming and necessary part of their work. So it’s odd feeling disappointed by their newest offering, Longest Year, an EP almost entirely constructed out of said bombast. In all five songs, the intensity and purpose that grounded their previous work is stripped away, leaving bare sheets of sentimentality.
Longest Year is more of a cousin of Maybe They Will Sing For Us Tomorrow than it is a direct descendant of their last effort, Chasing After Shadows… Living With The Ghosts. But where …Tomorrow fused guitars and violins into a flowing, cohesive album, these songs are all static ends in themselves – each one sounds more like the final song of a monumental album than a part of anything greater. Themes come and go, usually backed by walls of violins and celestial drones, but few ideas adhere. “Dark Beyond The Blue” is the best on the EP, all shifting bass tones under a sky of flute and anonymous tones, but “Cruel Sparks” feels like that same exact song with generously reverbed guitars thrown in. The other three pieces are effective in similar ways, but they feel like perfunctory Hammock exercises, not heartfelt works of art. Strictly speaking, Longest Year is not a bad EP, but fans would probably find past work more rewarding and interesting.
Longest Year is out now on Hammock Music. [Listen & Purchase]
