Hooray for Earth
True Loves
Release Date: Jun 7, 2011
Genre(s): Pop/Rock
Record label: Dovecote Records
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Album Review: True Loves by Hooray for Earth
Very Good, Based on 7 Critics
Based on rating 9/10
You can’t say we haven’t been warned. Anyone who’s been following NYC’s Hooray for Earth since they released their ecstatic, shape-shifting Momo EP last summer knows that the band has been confidently inching toward some sort of game-changing breakthrough. Over the last 12 months the band has toured with Pains of Being Pure at Heart, collaborated with Twin Shadow, and released an almost comically over the top, special effects heavy music video, the likes of which we rarely see these days from anyone who isn’t Lady Gaga.
Based on rating 7.9/10
Hooray For Earth must've looked like party crashers when they opened for Surfer Blood and the Pains of Being Pure at Heart last year. Though they've staked out in different territories in terms of both production and influence, both headliners embody an ideal of what indie rock meant in the 1990s. Pains and Surfer Blood are heavy on the guitars, with songs written and recorded by four or five people in a room, each of whom has an easily identifiable job-- essentially a scrappier version of the "alternative rock" on the radio back in the day.
Based on rating B
MGMT, Yeasayer, Passion Pit, Cut Copy… So many bands have built careers around the arena-ready sound of ‘80s synthpop acts. After the success that is True Loves, Hooray For Earth should be added to that list of bands who’ve managed to pull that feat off. True Loves is an unrelenting pop assault. From the first track to the closer, each song sweeps the listener up in massive hooks.
Based on rating 2.5/5
Maybe it’s the fault of the iPod Shuffle generation, but sometimes you feel like giving up a kidney for more bands to nail just one style really well. New York’s Hooray For Earth, essentially a chap called Noel Heroux with a backing band, cast their net too wide on a notionally ambitious, ultimately floundering debut. Cinematic synth-pop (‘Salts’ and the rather tasty Pet Shop Boyisms of ‘Same’) sits beside crunchy companions to Sleigh Bells, flouncy crossbreeds of mechanical goth and guitar goth, and fashionably ‘hazy’ keyboard wobbliness.
Based on rating 5/10
This is bouncy, isn't it? It's a noisy vortex of synthesizers, guitars, drums from the get go. But it's all a bit shallow in the repetitive guitar noise and synth-laden nonsense that's been so damned popular — perhaps not without cause, but it's not a good start for this band with a name that's already threatening irrelevance. Sure, True Loves is good on occasion, don't get me wrong.
Opinion: Excellent
A clever and colourful long-player from the makers of one of 2011’s best singles. Mike Diver 2012 Hooray for Earth are the architects of one of 2011’s standout singles, this second LP’s title-track. True Loves, the song, is one of those instantly grabbing, sort-of-familiar-yet-compellingly-alien efforts which straddles its influences in such a way that it towers above the vast majority of them.
Opinion: Very Good
With a week to go until the release of their debut album, ‘True Loves’, Hooray For Earth’s Noel Heroux gives us a track by track guide and exclusive stream of the record he wrote and recorded across a five week period in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The three-piece will follow up their November UK debut headline tour this February and March to support the album’s release with dates calling at London, Manchester and Glasgow.1. Realize It’s Not The SunVocal layers sampled from ‘True Loves’.
'True Loves'
is available now