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Switchfoot - Hello Hurricane

Rating

RIYL

U2
Coldplay
Jon Foreman

Release Date

11/10/2009

Label

Atlantic Records

Tracklist

1. Needle and Haystack Life
2. Mess Of Me
3. Your Love Is A Song
4. The Sound (John M. Perkins' Blues)
5. Enough To Let Me Go
6. Free
7. Hello Hurricane
8. Always
9. Bullet Soul
10. Yet
11. Sing It Out
12. Red Eyes

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Recent Ratings
Mike Duchnowsky	Stephen Harris
benny06

13 years and several mega-hits later, Switchfoot should ring a bell in your mind. If not, turn to your youth group brat pack or casual music fan neighbors – they’ll know who Switchfoot is. For many an early 2000’s teen, the San Diego surfer guys were the defining band of their adolescence, pounding hearts and minds with unforgettable songs like “Dare You to Move” and “Meant To Live.” But today’s atmosphere isn’t quite the same – most fans seem to have moved on from frontman Jon Foreman’s feisty yelps. It’s not that Switchfoot is forgotten, but they definitely don’t have the same unquestioned allegiance and adoration they had back in their heyday.

Like most genuine and diligent bands, though, they persist without ever worrying about evolving to fit the current musical climate. Hello Hurricane is full length number seven for Switchfoot, and it’s largely the band doing the same or similar things they did on The Beautiful Letdown. Everything sounds amplified several times louder than what was found on Oh! Gravity and Nothing Is Sound however; there’s more conviction, greater explosiveness, and just more vigor in general. That easily lands this one somewhere around the second or third best of the band’s career, right behind The Beautiful Letdown, wrestling older material for position.

Nevertheless, its quality isn’t immediate. Many veteran fans will struggle just trying to get into the album, since they are older now and simple four-chord rockers don’t seem so impressive anymore (in fact, they’re just plain drab on first listen). But once the shell of commonplace tunes and redundancy is broken into, Hello Hurricane will appear to be the very best straightforward radio rock can offer while remaining as generic as can be.

“Needle and Haystack Life” whips the album into life with its yearning Brit-rock soar, but “Mess of Me” smashes its delicacy with filthy crunching riffs and Foreman moaning: “There ain’t no drug / The sickness is myself.” Mid-tempo numbers “Your Love Is Strong,” “Enough To Let Me Go” and “Hello Hurricane” all stun aesthetically as they cover topics of love and loss in memorable ways. “Yet” is a tear-jerker of a ballad and “Red Eyes” is a solid closer with one of those harmonic bridges that flows beautifully no matter what the rest of the track sounds like.

What prevents Hello Hurricane from topping The Beautiful Letdown is its steaming pile of filler. It’s not excessive, but “Free,” “Bullet Soul” and “Sing It Out” are B-side material at best. Whether they are trying desperately to make up for lackluster songwriting with inspiring lyrics, attempting to revive their amateur days awkwardly or loading choruses with the most yawn-worthy tunes, the other tracks plead desperately for them to be left off the record. In contrast, The Beautiful Letdown had no filler.

The level of attention Switchfoot gets today more accurately correlates to the quality of their music than the ultra-hype they were drenched in five years ago. They’ve always written trustworthy rock songs, and they continue to do so. But since they don’t go out of their way to produce something novel or momentous, the current subdued hype is just about the right amount of recognition for them. The same goes for Hello Hurricane.

--Matthew Tsai