Thoughts run hot. Pulses run hot. All of the hearts that they're attached to logically run hot too. There's no avoiding it, when they're working so hard to exist, to appear and to hold on. It's the chase that grinds you to a halt -- that wears you down to a stump.
Newcastle, England, band Let's Buy Happiness, a Communion Music discovery, lays out a scene that features many a pregnant moment that all drip with a consuming weariness, as if the effort to get from here to there has added a hundred pounds to the carriage of a body that just can't handle it. Love and life bring you to your knees, as lead singer Sarah Hall sings. There's no work-around for an easier path. The distance will always be the same. Everyone gets chopped down before they're able to hold themselves up, before the fates become even reasonably generous and toss a few bones out to the hungry mouths.
Hall, guitarist/keyboardist James Hall, guitarist Graeme Martin, bassist Mark Brown and drummer James King make a swarming sound of haunted optimism. The people in their songs are getting snapped at, their heels nipped and their toes stubbed, but the prowling toward something reminiscent of the desired happiness that they feel they deserve is always there. It's always being worked on, even as the hair keeps getting pulled out, even as the stars refuse to emerge, even as days turn to years and the rivers run dry. There is bound to be a rain that will fill the riverbeds. There is bound to be a cold night that will still yield a warm bed to sleep in. There is sure to be a reason we stand here and look off into the distance, as if it will someday speak.