Album Review: Hotline TNT, ‘Raspberry Moon’

No matter the era, trading in shoegaze usually means sweeping tidal waves of romance and optimism underneath even more towering noise and distortion. The clarity of emotion shining through Hotline TNT’s new album Raspberry Moon therefore reinforces arguments that the New York outfit is better classified as a rock band, even if its lead single affectionately references the record label helmed by Doug Dulgarian of They Are Gutting a Body of Water, a vanguard of the genre. Perhaps the follow-up to 2023’s Cartwheel wouldn’t sound so bright, anthemic, and grandiose – in other words, uninterested in sticking to stylistic trappings – had the lovely sentiments of its predecessor not been amplified by devotion and confidence, not to mention the dynamism of Will Anderson’s touring band joining him in the studio. After many months of the road, the frontman was eager to return to the familiar, for him, introverted process of making another album, but guitarist Lucky Hunter, bassist Haylen Trammel, drummer Mike Ralston, and producer Amos Pitsch convinced him otherwise. If nothing else, Raspberry Moon is evidence that at least sometimes, such a leap of trust – for the people in the songs no less than the ones making them – pays off.

1. Was I Wrong?

‘Was I Wrong?’ lights up Raspberry Moon with a whiff of suspicion turned romantic possibility – “Did you sing my song?/ You hummed along” – before being wrenched out in a fuzz storm of blistering guitars, pulverizing bass, and unrelenting drums. Will Anderson’s vocals strike you with their unprecedented, by Hotline TNT and general shoegaze standards, clarity, though he keeps the lyrics familiarly vague (setting: “our hang”). By its final iteration, you can taste the insecurity in Anderson’s delivery of the titular question, which isn’t enough to stop a guitar solo from soaring till the end.

2. Transition Lens

Like hot steam rising, this layered instrumental track is more than half the length of the album’s most fully-formed songs, suggesting it’s more than an interlude. Suggesting, too, that the band may be taking a hint or two from the experimental atmospherics of ML Buch, a sort of antithesis to their stadium-oriented evolution.

3. The Scene

Hotline TNT suddenly emerge at their most manic and muscular, mirroring the transition from stasis to inspiration that ‘The Scene’ represents: it was the first song they cracked as a collective. In about a dozen words, it communicates the desire to have someone throw a tantrum as evidence of their love. But it’s not hard to hear that desire coming from the music as subject, taunting the band to show us all they’re really in it.

4. Julia’s War

The name is a nod to the record label founded by shoegaze contemporaries They Are Gutting a Body of Water; the target of the narrator’s plea (“Why can’t you tell me?”); and, as a quick look at the liner notes reveals, a musician, Julia Blair, who joins in on the “na na na na na” group vocals that make this the most straightforwardly anthemic song Hotline TNT have laid to tape. Their hearts are all in it, so it works without sounding corny.

5. Letter to Heaven

In the world of Hotline TNT, heaven is lined with riffs, and there’s no doubt this song belongs in it. Love may be hanging in the air, where the narrator sends his prayer, but he’s still grounded and practical concerning it: “I’d make a bet we could fit in the van/ I think we’d make it in/ I’d make a joke and hope that it lands.” The setup, at least, is satisfying.

6. Break Right

Amos Pitsch’s piano and vibraphone rubs nicely against the main guitar riff and motorik drums, while the song is hunched over disappointment and frustration. Again, the clues are scarce. “Your type: the idiot fraud.” The setting: “My bad night.” Anderson was hesitant, at first, to finish the song, which the rest of the band was working on while he was writing the much livelier ‘The Scene’. But the moodiness balances out the optimism in a way that only makes the latter more convincing.

7. If Time Flies

Enamored and sunny (“Turn on the lights,” instructs Anderson on the first line), the song brings that optimism to life, even if it’s mostly the glow of anticipation: “When I’m on the road my feelings grow/ At all the show/ I wanna go and call your phone.” At one point, the distortion settles for one of the sweetest guitar licks on the album. Time’s both frozen and moving fast, making you want more.

8. Candle

There’s no other song on Raspberry Moon that evokes the rush of devotion quite like the ‘Candle’, from the drums that seem to perpetually quicken the pace of the song to the guitar riff that locks it in place; the narrator is thrust into a sea of possibilities yet firmly rooted in his love. Still, the chorus emphasizes there’s no effortlessness even in that kind of infatuation – “I wanna try/ Get butterflies” – a way to offset the cliche it wraps itself around. The simplicity is daring in its own way.

9. Dance the Night Away

You could replace “the night” in the title with “my insecurity,” which, along with the word “baby,” make up the entire chorus of the song. Riding on the same feeling as the previous two songs, it’s a reminder that grammar doesn’t work the same way when you’re in love, and that the same thing that’s currently making your heart throb can also make it break. (The setting: backstage.) Considering how jangly the instrumentation is, you wouldn’t mind swaying to it again and again, which is what it’s all about.

10. Lawnmower

Cicadas. A summer night. Heart still buzzing, but the heat’s died down. Electric guitars replaced by a 12-string acoustic. It’s the comedown, a humbling moment that finds the narrator hanging on to the possibility but ending up powerlessly alone. You hope it’s an outlier on the album, as it is musically, not a narrative conclusion. You hope, too, that it’s not over.

11. Where U Been?

Ambiguity and insecurity have their way in the end (“Come to find I just don’t fit in”), the fast-forwarded ‘Where U Been?’ suggests, but at least it allows Hotline TNT to bring back the big, heavy sound that kicked off Raspberry Moon. Which begs the question: was the tide of love conducive to the project’s forward momentum, or did it slow things down, back to a place of solitude despite the collaborative effort? The high is as addictive, of course, like an undeniable singalong, but there’s many places Anderson’s music fit in whether it’s tied up in romance, community, or anythingon the other side of the spectrum. ‘Where U Been?’ assures us of that, but it’s also a reminder that for every in the end, there’s always an until: you come over, you go home, we meet again. It can go either way, but with every repetition, your strength, just like those feelings, grows just the same

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