Their 7th studio album is one of the best of the band's career.
[Editor's note: Check out our interview with lead singer Jon Foreman]
A storm is on the horizon and Switchfoot doesn’t care. With their seventh studio release, Hello Hurricane, they defiantly proclaim that “all your dead end fury is not enough, you can’t silence my love.”
It has been three years since the last studio album from the boys from Southern California. In the meantime, lead singer Jon Foreman released 4 “seasonal EP’s” and a folk-pop side project with Nickel Creek’s Sean Watkins. With the long, mellow musical intermission, the question had to be asked: would Switchfoot forget how to rock?
Calm your worries and turn up the volume; if this album, their first recorded with label independence, is any indication, there is a new sense of urgency and musical fury burning. Foreman stated that the motto for the record was “What songs do you want to die singing?” What emerged, distilled from 80-plus songs recorded, is a cohesive 12-song set that is their strongest effort to date.
Much has been made of the fact that well known hip-hop producer Mike Elizondo (Eminem, Dr.Dre) co-produced the album with the band. Not only is his contribution felt in the rhythmic beats that keep your head bobbing, but he also encouraged the band to “not be afraid of what you’ve done in the past six years,” yielding a sound that is unmistakably Switchfoot. Stadium-ready rockers featuring fuzzed-out, crunchy guitars meld with atmospheric anthems that shimmer with an emotional hint of the past but grasp at hope.
The isolated call-and-response guitar that crashes into the drum track and bass line on their first single “Mess of Me” creates the strongest track on the album. As the music pounds, then pauses to allow Foreman to holler out the lines over only the drums, it gives the song the power of beat poetry with the urgency of rock-and-roll. When vocals and guitar wail at the same time “there ain’t no drug, there ain’t no drug, no drug to make me well … the sickness is myself,” it’s hard to miss the message.
Hello Hurricane blows through with a carefree attitude that has more swagger than past efforts but avoids pretension. As “Bullet Soul” pans from left to right and Foreman screams (quite literally) “you can’t stand by forever … are you ready to go,” there is a sense of freedom for the band to dig into what’s been stewing inside and belt it with abandon. As the moody-yet-hopeful “Yet” follows-up, Foreman promises to “sing until my heart caves in.”
The album also shows that Switchfoot has realized that the change starts with them. Diagnosing the “sickness is myself” and pledging to “live the rest of my life alive,” the album examines the forces that can enact change, both good and bad. Love, failure, storms of life, hope, change; the themes are universal and easily identifiable without being trite.
The strength of Foreman’s writing is his vulnerability. The slow build in “Always” ends with his cry, “Hallelujah! I’m caving in / Hallelujah! I’m in love again / Hallelujah! I’m a wretched man / Hallelujah! Every breath is a second chance.” Later, in “Yet”, he observes that, “If it doesn’t break your heart it isn’t love / If it doesn’t break your heart it’s not enough / It’s when you’re breaking down / With your insides coming out / That’s when you find out what your heart is made of / And you haven’t lost me yet.”
Musically, there are few weak spots; lyrically, if you will forgive a few awkward couplets in “The Sound (John M. Perkins Blues),” Hello Hurricane is subtle and challenging. Those who are aware of the bands passionate faith will catch the numerous references to his faith. Perhaps most profound and clear is when, in “Free” he sings, “There’s a hole in my heart but my hope / is not in me at all / I had a dream that my chains were broken / broken open / Free.”
In an interview before the albums release, the band commented that on this album the “darks are darker and the lights are brighter and the lows are lower and the highs are higher.” Though the band choose the title Hello Hurricane to represent the storms of this life, the title is appropriate. When the songs sink into the eye of the hurricane, the calm is eerily beautiful and introspective. But when unleashed, the tracks land with the fury of the perfect storm. The collected effect is one of the best albums of Switchfoot’s career.
