ALBUM REVIEW: Hopewell “Good Good Desperation” (Tee Pee, 2009)

I wish I lived in an era where rock & roll sounded like this.  Once there was a time when the kids sat around listening to fucked the nines hard rock and it somehow broke through to the masses.  Hopewell’s newest record, Good Good Desperation, is a blast of straight up, glorious warped, stoned out, progged up, psych rock that’s as good as it gets now — or for the last 20 years.

Back in the late ’80s and early ’90s bands like the Flaming Lips and Jane’s Addiction roamed the planet bashing away proudly at huge riffs, fucked guitars, and primal drums.  Hopewell are not pale copies of these bands — but the aforementioned acts do seem like the last “new” idea these New Yorkers may have heard.  And that is a good thing.  Miles away from the standard guitar noodling and random jamband-on-10 riffage of most new psychedelic bands, Hopewell are concerned with making a great rock record — old school style.   (There’s the other route that classicist styled rock bands are taking into ’70s AOR — a genre which is, well, never okay.   Addressed here through the Eagles diss, “I ain’t got no peaceful easy feeling.”)

Opening with  a flying stack of Beach Boy’s esque vocals that uses a transition from “ah’s” to “ooh’s” to convey the sense of going from a beautiful sunshiney day to contemplating mountaintops with one vocal phrase the album then pushes through ten tracks of epic riffage, guitar joy, and loving production (done by the band themselves) which keeps your head banging, brain spinning, and smile grinning.

Give this one to new summertimes of freeways, sunshine deserts, girls smiles you may or may not kiss, and remember to crank it loud beneath the stars somewhere.

Hopewell is performing at the Comet Tavern on Friday 6/5 with Voyager One, Drug Purse, and This Blinding Light, $8.