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Jun 15, 2018Certainly few, if any, bands of the era made an album as consistently great as Hope Downs. Not many in Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever's era have, either. It's a small-scale triumph of hooks and guitars from a band whose members have figured it all out and delivered a debut album that comes as close to perfect as any guitar pop album can.
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Jun 15, 2018It’s a road record to soundtrack a hazy journey across the outback in search of a lost love, contemplating the world whilst swigging on a beer. Hope Downs is far from perfect, but it has charm in abundance.
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Jun 15, 2018If there’s anything to criticise Hope Downs for, it’s its risk-averse approach, and tendency to become a one-dimensional listen, but as a debut record, it presents a band that know exactly what they’re doing, and proceed to do it very well indeed.
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Jun 15, 2018RBCF are a welcome addition to the range of Australian guitar bands taking the world by storm, their confident debut an exploration of angular v. melodic guitars and energetic rhythms.
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MojoJun 6, 2018Ultimately, the record triumphs via Rolling Blackouts; deep inhabitation of their music, ans the space of its creation. [Jul 2018, p.92]
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Jun 14, 2018Even with the songwriting differences, Hope Downs sounds like a unified partnership between five musicians who've known each other for most of their lives.
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Jun 18, 2018Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever have more tricks up their sleeves, it seems. For a debut, though, a couple tricks are enough, especially when you’ve already mastered them.
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Jun 15, 2018Sophisticated and subversive in equal measure, their staccato sing-alongs come on pristine and precise, then unspool in surprising directions as decorum gives way to abandon.
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Q MagazineJun 6, 2018Hope Downs shows how jangling indie should be done. [Summer 2018, p.114]
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Jun 14, 2018Every amp tone on this album is just sweet enough, every jangling rhythm hits exactly where it should. Rolling Blackouts are playing an old game, but they're damned good at it.
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Jun 18, 2018Even at their most fervent, the characters of Hope Downs remain soaked in sun, able to convince themselves that one great night could be enough to set them straight again. At about 35 minutes, Hope Downs is a brief vacation, and so are many of its songs.
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Jun 25, 2018It’s the sound of musicians that know exactly what they want to be.
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Jun 19, 2018With Hope Downs, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever have adroitly taken their trademark sound and expanded it into a thoroughly enjoyable album--and they’ve done it in rapid time.
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Jun 15, 2018Hope Downs more than delivers on the promise of the Melbourne quintet’s two early EPs, doubling down on the melancholy pop it forged on 2015’s Talk Tight and last year’s The French Press while also polishing its sound.
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Jun 13, 2018It’s a peculiar record and one that involves a push-and-pull between two extremes; on the one hand, the instrumentation is wound tight and built around sharp melodies that, at their best, are difficult to shake off--‘Bellarine’ and ‘Sister’s Jeans’ in particular are real earworms.
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Jun 6, 2018Not everything on Hope Downs impresses, as tracks such as "Sister’s Jeans’’ and "The Hammer’’ fail to recount the warmth and vivid storytelling found on the rest of the album. Regardless, Hope Downs is a record that sounds like it was made in the Australian bush, and it’s when this sense of local experience is presented most effectively that it really starts to shine.
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Jun 11, 2018Hope Downs is as good a reminder as any that life’s a blast. Head to the beach, you’ve found the soundtrack.
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UncutJun 6, 2018It's entirely addictive--one fix and you're hooked. [Jul 2018, p.36]
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Jun 15, 2018At 10 tracks and 36 minutes, Hope Downs isn't a great deal longer than either of Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever's previous two EPs and perhaps the only disappointment here is that their sound doesn't feel particularly expanded upon in the long-player format.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 25 out of 27
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Mixed: 0 out of 27
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Negative: 2 out of 27
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May 27, 2020Absolutely flawless from start to finish. One of the best albums of the decade.
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Feb 23, 2019
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Oct 16, 2018