New Hope Club is on the verge of releasing their sophomore album. With four singles spanning two double releases, the UK-based trio is taking listeners to a new era. It’s not hard to hear an immediate shift of sonic palettes and energy from their debut album, New Hope Club, which was only two years apart. Although the debut album was named after the band, the trio has revealed that the new album would represent more of who they are and explore a level of vulnerability and authenticity that the band has not previously tapped into. Their newly discovered sound may sound like something entirely fresh and new—of rejuvenation in expansion, but for the band, instead of rushing ahead, they stripped down to core and delved into their past to rediscover a part of themselves that are true and real—that’s where the power of songwriting in their sophomore album came from.
New Hope Club had a vision for their new album—personal and meaningful. From every line to every sound, even to the color of the covers, it was New Hope Club’s own design and craft. “L.U.S.H.” which is short for “Love You So Hard” explores the intricate and complicated nature of passion and heartbreak. The lyrics tells a simple story about a boy in love with a girl, who ended up breaking his heart, while the sonics splash of spicy energy and sensuous sexiness. New Hope Club’s melodies are more than ever delicious. It’s easily a song that will haunt you for the rest of the day.
You’d imagine that an album described as “revealing” and “personal” would be an intense, even demanding listening experience, but not for New Hope Club. They aren’t like others. Their natural humor and charisma combines with the fun that comes from creativity never fail to show you the best of making music. What makes them so different is that when you listen to them and see them, they are not just three people in a band with chart-hitting songs. You’d also hear friendship and memory making and see three people who are so connected musically and love what they do so purely. New Hope Club has a very different energy from other bands.
“L.U.S.H” music video shows you just how much fun they’d be having. They played with a classic The Beatles’ harmony in the end. They filmed a lyrical video figuring a dance that was never scripted to shoot. They smash the irony of playing a youthful, sexy song in a senior home with only two people eating lunch, tackling the experience of playing for an empty crowd — which many musicians could relate to in their early days.
Written by Katrina Yang
Press Q&A with New Hope Club
Q (Underground Music Collective): The music video “L.U.S.H.” was instantly a big hit when it came out. What is concept and the creative process behind the music video of “L.U.S.H.”
New Hope Club: I would have been easy for us to do. Like a classic music video. There’s a love interest and we do like the story of the song. We all love humor, and we love making people laugh. We want to poke a little fun of ourselves in this video. WE don’t take ourselves too serious. We love the idea of going to a show and getting high for a show, and we get on the stage and there’s only two people in the crowd and they were both old people in old people’s home, eating their dinner. I think that’s quite funny how it’d sync with the lyrics. The music video was so much fun. The director was so down to work with us and change around for us. The full thing is on film, which we never done before. The star in the video, the old man, who runs the old people social club, whatever you want to call it. He wasn’t meant to have any lines or dance, but he turned up in the day and just being incredible. He was like ‘Do you guys want me to dance?’ And we were like, ‘yeah, we want you to dance.’ We have a whole lyric video of the guy’s just dancing in the middle. It’s such a fun video. I hope you got the sense of irony and the fact that it’s a really sexy song and we were playing to two old people.
Q (Riot Rage Magazine): What are some ways you’d like to experiment on for future releases?
New Hope Club: For us, this album has been like a huge step forward from the last album, and I think for us, we just always want to keep making those steps forward into like a new world. Not like losing more we gain on the way, but just always trying to find new things—the people we look up to the most, like The Beatles, and bands that used to challenge themselves. I think we always want to challenge ourselves. I think we did a really good job at solidifying who we are on this album, a bit more represents our up brings. We live in a world right now where technology is advanced and new things come out all the time. Different styles of trying to record things I think we just always want to be ahead of the game.
I think what’s important is that we don’t put our sound in a box. For us, music is all about creativity and having fun, and at the end of the day, we’re doing because we love music. It wouldn’t be good for us to set up camp on “this is our sound.” I think we’ll always be developing and figuring who we are and what we want to sound like. We’re just constantly lining and changing more things along the way
Q (ANTI Magazine): What inspired the color choice for every single double release?
New Hope Club: We’re all wearing blue today, that was not planned at all. I think I only owned blue clothes. At the start of the process, we kinda paired two songs together at the same time, and what felt right. And then we listened to it and had a little brain storm: like what color does this partner this songs. What does it make you feel. It definitely represents the message we wanted to give out. “Call Me a Quitter” was more of a personal song to us, and red represented love, whether for it to be romance or heartbreak.
Q: How would you describe the new era of New Hope Club?
New Hope Club: We’ve been asked a lot about the change in our sound, but first I think it’s not really a change, but just getting back to who we are. Instead of changing, it’s more about what’s real and what’s inside of us already that we just need to find. That’s a lot of drawing out our inspiration were kids. We didn’t write every song on the first record, and we’ve been very open about that. This second album is entirely written by us. It’s more real and personal than ever, we just decided to very open and let people hear what New Hope Club really is…It just feels good to be able to say that’s this is a record that’s being made by us, and everything has a purpose and a meaning to it.
Q(Unpublished): Since lyric vulnerability is a major key aspect in songwriting. What do you think it’s important to have this type of telling voices in your music?
New Hope Club: From a personal standpoint, it’s the easiest to write. Yo have the most content about to write about your own life. WE draw inspiration from stories and experiences we have. Ultimately we’re storytellers and what we write in songs, we elaborate on such simple action, like stepping off of a train, and there’d be a whole story in our minds. As a listener, I do love to hear a real story.
Q: You recently finished a US tour this summer. Do you have a favorite moment that you’ll all remember forever?
New Hope Club: Yeah the tour was amazing. We haven’t been able to play shows in the US for three more years. It’s so nice to come back out and see all the fans again and get everyone down to the concert and play some new tunes we’ve been working so hard on. Every night on stage, there’s always that moment that you’re so far away from home and there’s so many people coming to see us and listen to our music and stuck with us through such a strange time period. It did feel like a celebration. This is like the biggest pay off of all time. Just felt like this electric feeling in the room.
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