Review Summary: "You leave a taste... a bitter one"
In the preceding weeks some of the descriptors thrown around
The Hope Six Demolition Project were 'jazzy', 'psychedelic' and 'politically motivated'. Unfortunately, it takes more than saxophone lines laid over mid-tempo rock songs in 4/4 to make something jazz; it takes more than grainy production and tinny drums to make something psychedelic; and it takes more than a list of things which are bad in the world to actually make a statement.
Hope Six describes poverty and tragedy in such a toneless and unsympathetic manner it takes a minute to register as the same artist who gave us the poetic and beautiful
Let England Shake. Harvey mumbles and grumbles her way through eleven obtuse, overbearing songs, with lines like "They're gonna put a Walmart here!" or even worse, "That's what they want, oh yeah/Money, honey" ostensibly saying something while really saying absolutely nothing.
The only redeeming feature comes with the somewhat graceful "Dollar, Dollar" which calls back to some of Harvey's minimalistic work from
Is This Desire?. This closer is a slow-burning number about an encounter with a beggar child – a child who was somehow still starving on the streets despite all Harvey's anti-Walmart rallies and complaints about the aesthetic quality of derelict housing projects. It seems almost like a wake-up call for the artist, the only song which provides in spades the humanity and heart that is otherwise so conspicuously absent. It's the only point where Harvey sounds like she has any sympathy at all for the victims of the circumstances she's been writing about, as if she were so wrapped up in documenting the tragedies she forgot to feel anything for them.
The Hope Six Demolition Project might wear a mask of activism, passion and meaningful dialogue, but don't be fooled – look past the pseudo-jazzy breaks and off-the-cuff production and all you'll find is a big empty bag of nothing.
