Blue October — I Hope You’re Happy (08/17/18)
Blue October came into my life in 2006 with one of the best mainstream hits I’ve ever heard, “Hate Me”. This led to one of my all-time favourite albums with Foiled, released the same year. Since then I’ve gone on to hear every album from these guys and have found some of the best music of my life along the way. Frontman Justin Furstenfeld pours his soul into his music. He’s written songs about his battles with substance abuse, mental health, and divorce; giving fans a glimpse into his life with each album. I’ve always found some of the best music comes from some of the worst times, and through all the struggles Furstenfeld experienced, he managed to wonderfully translate his feelings through song.
2013’s Sway was the first album where things finally seemed to be settling down for Furstenfeld. He was roughly a year into sobriety and had re-married the previous year and had a daughter. It was the first album that I noticed a loss of at least a piece of that Blue October emotion I felt in all their previous work. If Sway was heading in the direction of stability, 2016’s Home fully embraced a feeling of comfort and happiness. After years of listening to an emotionally pained man behind the mic, to hear him finally happy, as great as that is, it took away from the Blue October I had come to love.
I’ve since come to terms with the fact that my favourite struggling musician has moved on, and I am very happy for Furstenfeld. The man remains a talented song writer and continues to write powerful songs that are focused more on hope than despair. I Hope You’re Happy is the ninth album to come from this band and comes twenty years since the release of their debut. They released the title track as a lead single early in the year and I was very satisfied with what I heard. It’s a high-tempo track that seems to incorporate a synth beat which is something I haven’t heard from them before. The chorus is built for a lead single and is powerfully uplifting.
I managed to completely forget about a possible upcoming album until early August when I checked in on the band to see the new album was due in two weeks and they had a few more pre-release singles (at least on Apple Music, looks like there may have been more on YouTube). “Your Love is Like a Car Crash” gave me an initial R&B vibe with its smooth and slow flow and groovy hook. It’s a cool new sound I haven’t seen the band experiment with before and they pull it off well, though it doesn’t pull me in like their best. Fellow pre-release, “I’ll Do Me, You Do You” is a bit more familiar. It’s a beautiful show of the heart-wrenching pop these guys can create. The hook is simple but so effective and Furstenfeld sings delicately in a soft verse.
“Colors Collide” on the other hand is the grungy track of the bunch, bringing up similarities to “Drilled a Wire Through My Cheek” off Foiled. The bass is thick, and the beat is strong and slow, incorporating what sounds like the smash of a metal keg like Slipknot is known for. It’s good to hear the band unleash their edgier side at this point in their career, even for just a song, and Furstenfeld isn’t afraid to show off his bark. The final song I heard before the release, “How to Dance in Time” (“HTDIT”) is the type of song I want to hear less of from Blue October. There’s no such thing as a bad song from this band (actually, Home might contest that statement), but a song like “HTDIT” is just a bit too mushy for me.
As for the rest of the album, opener “Daylight” delivers a big hook that’s fun, but breaches on obnoxious and has lyrics I fail to understand. “I Want to Come Back Home” walks a similar line to the previously mentioned “HTDIT”, but it manages to be a rather impactful song, if not at least for its nice melody. “Remission in Cmaj” supplies a two-and-a-half-minute slow-burning piano interlude between the raucous “Colors Collide” and the tame “HTDIT”, and once you get through that you reach what is possibly my favourite song of the album. “King” is an inspirational love song, but the lyrical content is secondary to the feeling felt in the chorus. It is the high that music can create, and I feel it on almost every Blue October album. Furstenfeld shows me why I love his voice so much and he displays some little tweaks to his delivery that are refreshingly new to me (when he sings, “With all that I know”).
“Let Forever Mean Forever” is the lullaby song, Furstenfeld singing as if to a young child. It’s easy and light, and so lacking anything to make me care. I expected to hear songs like this though and I’m just happy they don’t stick with this formula throughout. “All That We Are” takes the cake for the longest track up to this point, slowing moving through a hushed verse that leads to an epic and anguished chorus that has Furstenfeld howling flawlessly. “I love all that we are,” he sings in the bridge and outro, a line that manages to hold a lot of feeling in its delivery.
At this point, I’m relatively happy with the album. I was prepared to be let down with this one after being underwhelmed with their last release. The album however, eleven songs in, has been far from disappointing. The final song, a daunting nine minutes, only takes six of those to make its impact. “Further Dive (The House That Dylan Built)” will go down as a classic from this band. It begins with Furstenfeld singing lightly along with an acoustic guitar and a backing vocal layer that sounds almost like a talk box, creating this slight spacey feeling. The song slowly crescendos and when the drums come thudding in on the second chorus the song starts to bloom and expose how beautiful it can become. The bridge almost teases an early end to the song before entering the final chorus with this classic, slow pounding epic build that evokes some of the strongest feelings a song has given me all year. The album fades away with a few minutes of humming guitar backing a soft piano, providing a bit of a cool down after such a moving piece.
So, there you have it, Blue October’s ninth album, I Hope You’re Happy should stand proudly in the shadow of their older work and is a step forward after their last album. The members of Blue October are adults with families and have more to keep them busy outside of music these days, but I am so happy to see they are continuing to release new music. These past three albums have marked a new chapter for the band and though it’s taken a while for me to come to terms with it, I feel like with this album they’ve shown me that they’ve still got a lot to offer. So, congratulations on a great album Blue October and this better not be that last I hear from you. 8/10
