I’ve always hated the concept of ‘desert island discs‘. So I’ve been shipwrecked on an island, marooned away from society, all amenities and all forms of human contact for potentially the rest of my sad and increasingly deranged life? I’ve not even got a beach ball to draw a face on and inevitably end up fucking by around week four as the loneliness drives me to sad, feral desperation? And you want me to choose eight songs to play on repeat for infinity to soundtrack my own mental journey into the heart of darkness?? I mean, I love Old Town Road as much as the next man, but by the hundred and twenty seventh time it’s played in the background as another angry parrot pecks at my arse hairs, repeatedly?? “Squawk! Can’t nobody tell me nothing! Squawk!”?? I’m going to learn to hate that song rather quickly.
But then I learned that perhaps it was just the number of songs that was the issue. Forty two songs to a desert island? Yeah, I reckon I could live quite happily for the rest of time. I’d still go crazy, obviously, but in a more earnestly satisfying and poignantly depressed sort of way. And those parrots will learn some bars.
Forty two songs. Two hours and twenty seven minutes. That is (as far as I can work out) the extent of Massachusetts group The Hotelier/The Hotel Year’s entire recorded output. And every emotional, artistic, intellectual and affectionate need a human being ever needs is here. Lead singer/songwriter/bassist Christian Holden is as accomplished a lyricist as there’s ever existed in the artform, possessing a poetic sensibility and unashamed earnestness that can fundamentally cleanse and then rearrange your very soul in a world of post-truth nihilism. More importantly though: their songs are almost always absolute fucking bangers. If you couldn’t speak English, The Hotelier would still be in your top ten favourite ever acts simply based on the sheer, bollock-splitting, rush of blood to the spleen of their immediate songcraft. Then you’d learn English from the lyrics, realise what beauty and genius underpins these bops, and would scientifically become a better person based on their teachings. You’d also learn words like ‘dichotomies’, ‘salutations’ and ‘chrysolite’ a lot earlier than most English speakers.
They are one of my favourite artists of all time. And the fuckers haven’t released a single piece of music since I first became aware of them
I can’t even remember how I first became aware of The Hotelier, can’t remember the first time I heard them, can’t remember the first time I felt their presence. It’s like asking me the first time I tied my shoelaces or became aware of my own mortality. I know there was a time where it wasn’t there, and now if most definitely is, but the changing of the guard was never noted. I heard their masterful third album ‘Goodness’ in late 2016, fell in love, named it the fourth best album of that year, fell in love even more and later retconned it to be the best album of that year (potentially the decade/century), saw them live and bawled my eyes out believing there was a God, and went back to assess their first two albums. In 2023, I named Soft Animal as the greatest song of the previous 10 years (spoiler…?). Goodness was released on May 27th 2016. I first started to become obsessed with them a few months after that. In the almost eight years since the fuckers haven’t released anything else!!
So perhaps I’m writing this list to tempt fate, to harness the dark power of Sod’s Law. Wouldn’t it be awful if I spent all this time and more than 10’000 words writing about the band’s complete discography only for them to release a new album and make the whole thing redundant?? Oh no, you guys, that’d be terrible! Absolutely don’t do that! That’d be the worst! Spank me, Daddoes, I’ve been naughty!! In terms of writing about the importance, majesty and genius of the band, Zac Djamos wrote a perfect piece for Stereogum to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the band’s most widely regarded second album ‘Home, Like Noplace is There’, which I’m not sure is humanly possible to compete with. So instead I’m sticking to what I do best: borderline autistic listicles! I was also blessed enough to have my longtime yaoi fixation Seth Manchester to answer a few questions about their bone rattlingly good production on the band’s (at time of writing!) final album.
Seriously though, the band have promised not to record another album before the revolution, so that’s yet another reason for all you workers to unite and break free of your chains (and join your local Communist Party branch, obviously). This list is basically a quick cheat sheet to the band, and forty two reasons why you should be as obsessed with them as I am!
‘We Are All Alone’ 2009
Ye gads!
You know how a lot of rankings like this always have the caveat “Well, this isn’t really the worst per se, more the less good“? Well, that doesn’t quite apply to The Hotelier. From this point on? Sure, every song is at least decent. But Bird Brain absolutely fucking sucks.
The band’s debut release from back when they were still called ‘The Hotel Year’ in 2009 was the ‘We Are All Alone’ EP. The record made little impact, it’s not available on any streaming platforms or for sale on their Bandcamp (forcing us completionist perverts to seek out more… illicit methods…), and the band evidently have little affection for “Our first demo-ish/mini-lp sort of thing”. Which is understandable, as compared to the places they’d drag their music to even on their first proper album a couple of year’s later, it’s pretty by the numbers stuff in places. And you find me anyone who wants to be reminded of the type of shit they were getting up to when they were freaking seventeen years old. But there are some very good songs on it. Which we will get to. Because this isn’t one of them.
Bird Brain is a snotty, Green Day attempt that ends up an obnoxious mess. Christian occasionally tried out a guttural, black metal inspired throaty singing style on the first EP (and never again!) that is at it’s most objectionable here, before the song’s pop punk chorus yearns for the opening slot in the Vans Tour third stage. And lines like “Why do, we look to the left/When we’ve been happy looking right/Our entire lives?” betray a lack of thought and a lyrical sketchiness that the band would grow out of very soon.
But, Jesus everyone, their debut EP was recorded when the band were still in freaking high school . Let’s not be too critical of stuff released by actual, literal children, yeah?
‘We Are Not Alone’ 2009
25 second intro to the record. Still better than Bird Brain.
40 Opening Mail For My Grandmother
‘Goodness’ 2016
From their first EP, to the band’s (at time of writing!) final album. And not a bad song by any means. Just… nothing.
The Hotelier are amazing for one of three reasons: either the lyrics are so good that they allow you to speak with God; or the songs are so pounding that you’re forced to shit out your very soul; or – for the very best songs – both. As a quick shorthand, I’d recommend going to the landmark 2014 album ‘Home, Like Noplace is There’ if you want the greatest examples of untangling trauma and elucidating your psyche through song lyrics, and if you want the stone cold Seth Manchester produced bangers then you go to ‘Goodness’.
The lyrics on ‘Goodness’ are still great, of course, it’s just that Christian takes a less materialistic and more philosophical view of human existence itself rather than dark examinations of petty human relationships. On ‘Home…’ he’s almost Rorschach at times, but on ‘Goodness’ he’s definitely Dr Manhattan. He goes all fucking hippy, basically. It’s the band’s most musically accomplished record though, so if the lyrics are ever slightly less gratifying than you’d like, the song will always just slap those fears away.
Well… not always…
Opening Mail For My Grandmother is a dangerously saccharine ode to an obviously close to death relative, which doesn’t really seem to be saying anything not covered in Young At Heart by the Bluebells in 1993. This lyrical weightlessness is exposed by a bland acoustic ballad that sounds even more unnecessary when the sonically similar song at track 12 (and #32 on this list) makes similar moves for more successfully (and in less than half the length!).
Not a bad song, just…
…
…hang on, what were we talking about? I’ve already forgotten it.
‘We Are Not Alone’ 2009
God dammit, Hotel Year! Can this song decide if it’s shit or not, please?? Searching is almost just a straight up terrible song. A sub-Bowling for Soup pop punk atrocity probably suited to the soundtrack to ‘Eurotrip’. “Hey, Let’s live today/Cause baybay/This is today”: what even is that?? And it features the weirdest vocal inflection Christian ever attempted.
That’s fine. We understand that. Things can be shit sometimes, that’s not against the law. But then two minutes in, the song completely changes gears and becomes an ambitious and epic record closer, finally finishing with a voice sample (which I can’t for the life of me source!) about the nation being prepared for war. Wha’ happen??
So, yeah: 40% awful, 60% threatens to become something amazing. Almost impossible to rank. Thanks a lot, jerks.
38 N 43° 59′ 38.927″ W 71° 23′ 45.27”
‘Goodness’ 2016
We sit and we talk, not of much but
Of little. I see the moon, the moon sees me.
I would smile but it would be meaningless.
I wouldn’t want it to be.
But in the landscape of tilted heads
While the sky sheds
Skin on my body I feel
My voice quiet to a halt, and this is where I am.You in the light feels new/woken
Woven deep until the boots
Touch dryness against the fallen limb of oaken.
This place speaks. It says many things
Of nothing, makes
No demands, and offers
No salvation.
Only repeats what you say in
A way you’ve never heard it.
An echo off the far wall.
A reflection of your face.
I see the moon.
The moon sees me.
That’s enough.
Yep, that’s the whole thing.
The Hotelier know how to do openers. They’re extremely good at doing (as it were) introductions (if you like) to (shall we say?) the albums. Each opener is a cheat sheet for the record’s themes, sound and narrative threads. You know? Like fucking good albums should have?
(deep breath)
N 43° 59′ 38.927″ W 71° 23′ 45.27”* doesn’t really count as the opening song, instead a spoken word poem read by Christian that allows track two (#5) to burst onto the scene with such joyous force that it will rupture your serotonin gland. The 49 second poem positions the listener in a far more serene and pastoral place than the previous album. Where ‘No Place…’ was all looking out of windows of claustrophobic apartment blocks wondering whether to splatter yourself on the concrete below, ‘Goodness’ is in nature, grass underfoot, oak trees surrounding, moon in the sky, sky shedding skin on body. It seems that the band really did take the advice of so many keyboard warriors, and went outside to touch grass.
(*the coordinates of Sabbaday Falls, a waterfall in Vermont, Massachusetts that Christian almost drowned in as a teenager. According to Christian’s own medical record, online at their own ‘oversharer portal: “Near death experience. Slipped into a waterfall, went into shock and drowned. Only stubbed my finger. Was put into an induced coma”. There are two further ‘coordinate’ tracks on the album that each reference specific places and specific events and oh God this album is so good)
Or, that album cover, basically. ‘Goodness’ is a bunch of geezers in a field, dicks and tits swinging in the wind, and couldn’t be happier with the scenario. Told you, dude, fucking hippy shit.
‘It Never Goes Out’ 2011
The vast strides made by the band between their promising but scrappy 2009 EP and their debut album proper the next year (originally released while the band were still called The Hotel Year) are pretty phenomenal. Yeah, sure, sonically a lot of that can simply be put down to getting into a proper studio and working with a producer (Ian Van Opijnin) who obviously understood how to best exhibit the band’s strange magic. But the record also contains songs and lyrics that it’s impossible to imagine coming from the mind of someone not yet 20 years old.
…is what I’ll be talking about more on other songs from their debut album, as Holiday is a 95 second, enjoyable but disposable blast of energy.
“Well you say you’re a realist well I really know what I want, just figuring out how to get there on the back of happy thoughts”.
‘We Are All Alone’ 2009
Mate, seventeen years old when The Hotel Year released this EP. For an established band of grizzled scene veterans in their early 30s, it’s pretty decent. For an actual child. It’s pretty fucking spectacular.
‘It Never Goes Out’ 2011
OK, so it’s more the other songs on their debut album that I’m going to praise, but this is pretty good!
I’m dreaming while waking
Perceptions and personalities are crafted from my own mind
While I combust and melt away, I see everything that I cannot believe
And I’m fucking gone
19 years old.
34 Even the Keys Need to Be Locked Up
‘Two Song Demo’ 2009
Between the band’s debut EP and their 2011 debut album proper, they released a two song demo imaginatively titled ‘Two Song Demo’. Amateur sounding but in now way unlistenable, the two songs are a couple of curios that don’t much resemble anything else in the band’s catalogue. Both the songs have the ‘This Is A Really Long Title (Can We Sell As Much As Panic! At the Disco Please?)’ naming conventions that the band wouldn’t really explore again. Both the songs are more obviously mainstream than anything on their debut EP, and you wonder if the demo was conceived as an attempt to get the band signed. Hey, look, we can do pretty banging straight up rock songs too. Or maybe they were just stretching their legs one last time because they knew a proper album was coming and wanted to piss about a bit on something they considered non canon (and good luck finding copies of this song. I found it, obviously, but I’m a scumbag who knows the internet’s darkest holes). Nothing they released afterward would quote Bruce Springsteen songs. But quoting the Serenity Prayer? Yeah, that’s very Hotelier Coded.
33 N 42° 6′ 3.001″ W 71° 55′ 3.295″
‘Goodness’ 2016
I’m going to joke a lot about how I’m only writing this list in the hope of ‘CM Punking‘ reality and ensuring it becomes immediately dated with the release of the band’s first new material in eight years. And I’m going to joke a lot about how the distant promise of that mythical fourth album is actually the only thing that I’ve got left to look forward to in this hideous mess of an existence that I inhabit. And I’m going to joke a lot about how I’m going to hold my breath until the album is announced, and if I drop dead from lack of oxygen then that’s fine because a world without a new Hotelier album is not a life worth living. And I’m going to joke a lot about how I’m going to set off a nail bomb in a different primary school every hour, on the hour, until that album is announced and my requests are met. But please always bear in mind that these actually aren’t jokes at all and I’m completely serious.
But also be aware that I’m kinda joking. I think The Hotelier’s discography is now so perfect that I’m not sure a new album is in any way needed, and I think they’ve probably already achieved their perfect artistic statement(s). And Christian at least would probably agree that their work outside the band is achieving far more worthwhile and effective goals than the songs they used to sing in a dumb little guitar band (“The best thing you can do in your life is just do something you’re really good at and do it really well, and see the immediate benefit of that”). There’s the truly co-operative and socialised record label Dreams of Fields (“100% of the label profits must be reinvested into member-artists and their releases… leaving more room on the release schedule for albums that challenge the current state of music”); their involvement in The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers; and the multiple avenues of projects and support under their Princebird Solutions banner. As Ian Cohen puts it perfectly in a 2023 Ringer article: “Holden’s curiosity and near-total disregard for typical industry ambitions [are] a massive part of their initial appeal and their ultimate legacy”.
Since 2013, Christian Holder is also the Logistics Coordinator, Advisor, and Assistant to the Directors at Not Back to School Camp, an annual camp for homeschooled and unschooled kids aged 13-18. (“I wish more peeps were into unschooling or alternative schooling as it is literally imo the most practical way to introduce anti-hierarchical values to kids“)The kids at the camps are obviously aware that Christian can play guitar, but don’t know that they wrote and performed some of the most important songs of the past decade. “They all just view me as the counsellor that is the most likely to break the rules and plan some activity where it sounds like the kids are going to get hurt”. The intergenerational learning while surrounded by nature would inspire a great deal of the band’s third and final album. The coordinates of that camp are N 42° 6′ 3.001″ W 71° 55′ 3.295″.
When I organize an event and people come and they all have a really great experience, … I’m like, ‘Holy crap, I did that. That’s like writing a record every day at camp.
Christian in that Ringer interview
The third ‘coordinates song’ on ‘Goodness’ might only be 78 seconds, but it’s beautiful. Bolstered by a collage of winds whistling through grass and chirping birds, and Christian nearly whispering the lullaby ‘I See the Moon‘, referencing the album’s opening poem. Shit, dudes, there’s a lot going on with this album, you get me?
Oh! And I forgot to mention Christian’s poker playing! Because if you’re an artist in latter stage capitalism you have to make money somehow, right?? Maybe that’s what the fourth album can be about? Your Deep Raise? Settle the Card? They could call it ‘Fold Like No Ace Is There’?
OK I’m done…
‘Goodness’ 2016
Another gorgeous if slightly negligible, sub two minute album filler. Mate, I’ve got to fill out the bottom of this list somehow, this band just don’t do many shit songs. The way this song collapses into an ambient siren at the end just, I dunno, makes it feel that little bit more special. I don’t make the rules.
‘Two Song Demo’ 2009
Remember we talked about that one song from ‘Two Song Demo’ at #34? Well there was actually another song on that demo.
God, look at those fucking children, photographed in October 2009. Named… is a fun little punk-about with some brilliant flashes of lyrics that no literal child should be capable of. Extremely notable for that “Wha-oh, wha-oh!” before the line “You’re burning bridges, carving memorial plaques that say ‘Closed Indefinitely'” being scientifically observable as the official first recorded “Wha-oh, wha-oh!” on a Hotelier/Hotel Year record.
‘Home, Like Noplace Is There’ 2014
Ah yes. The Hotelier nerds will have been wondering where this one might land. The one song from the band’s universally fellated second album that you might be tempted not to call ‘outstanding’. Likely by far and away the band’s most controversial song. Because not enough people have heard Bird Brain.
Musically, it’s very strong. Not top tier Hotelier quality, and with a sing-song melody that occasionally borders on twee, but that musical breakdown after Holden shouts “SHIT*!” ranks amongst my favourite moments. Lyrically though? It’s… it’s… It’s an experiment?
(*’Having a Song Drop As the Singer Screams a Swearword‘ is a very niche musical skill but one I nonetheless consider Hotelier the best in the world at)
Eschewing their standard poetry exploring the psychological dialectics of trauma, Holden goes all Randy Newman on Housebroken. Goes all “Once upon a time…”. Goes a bit A Dog Named Sue. The song is a drawn out allegory at which we – the smartypants listeners – are supposed to recognise the metaphor and then stroke our chins and exclaim “So true!”. Holden just had a few issues making that metaphor work.
So here’s the story: The singer enters a yard protected by an angry guard dog, and basically tells it to take a chill pill. Says they’ve known this dog all its life, watched it constantly be constrained by the length of its chain and be physically abused by its owner. They offer to take the dog away from the owner (“We’ve got acres with streams/We won’t keep you in cages, make you beg for your treats/We won’t tell you to heel, though you might need some time to/Dig up those old bones your young self left behind”) but the dog rejects the suggestion, wondering what it’d even do without its master’s care (“Master’s all that I’ve got, he keeps me having a purpose/Gives me bed, keeps me fed, and I’m just slightly nervous of/What I might do if I were let loose”), before the singer concludes, basically, “could never be me fr”. I may be wrong, but I think they then kill the dog by ripping its head off.
Superficially, that allegory seems a bit problematic, doesn’t it? It’s an abused partner, right? And the abused feels unable to leave the abuser because they’ve been made dependant? And so the only possible remedy is to [checks notes] rip their head off? (Christian: “The dog probably should have eaten the naïve utopian narrator, but then who sings the ending??”) That’s, obviously, not what Holden intended, and the inserted factoid in the lyrics that the dog’s owner “says the same of his wife” may have been intended to take that reading off the table (“That’s who the guy is domestically abusing! Not the dog!!”) but actually just confuses other interpretations and ensures that domestic abuse is definitely being thought about. Described by Christian as “an anti-cop anthem inspired by the teachings of Malcolm X“, which – alright mate, calm down – to be honest fits about as well as the domestic abuse reading. It seems more likely that Christian – a committed anarchist – is decrying how state pressures us into violent normality in order to ensure survival, how there never seems to be an alternative and certainly not one that can be introduced by utopian empathy. But the metaphors are loose, the setting inappropriate and the background extras distracting. The band eventually agreed that less charitable interpretations were also legitimate, and eventually stopped playing it live (until being put back in the set for the album’s tenth anniversary shows). Holden says it was the first song he wrote for the album, but also kinda the only song he wrote for the album:
Now admittedly, this is one of the Hotelier songs I felt like I had a hand in writing, that is to say that I wasn’t simply a conduit for messages containing more wisdom than I possessed… Every other song on that album was given time, was meditated on, was never written but allowed to write itself. The lyrics were many words I have never said before in any real order. Writing the rest of that record genuinely felt like many therapy sessions. I remember sensations in my body that I haven’t felt since, like being a moment from sleep and being suddenly massively awake and strangely cold, suddenly crying at phrases from a stream of consciousness, and what felt like a rattling marble at the top of my spinal cord. Writing Home was like simultaneously realizing trauma held in my body for the first time and quickly unknotting it.
Holden 23/11/06
Perhaps ‘Home…’ was almost a spontaneous primal screaming therapy session, with magic brought down from the heavens, and Housebroken trips slightly as it sees the band stop for a second and think “Hang on, let’s try and take stock of this…”.
Mate, the lyrics in that last verse though. I’m pretty sure I only understand about 40% of what’s going on but I love it:
Well, I made you a hood ornament for an oncoming car
Because your bark might seem bad, but I’ll show you the scars
From when the state sent you over to deliver your teeth
To the heels of your kindred, breaking chains from their feet
And then you wipe your hands clean, splash of water, paper napkin
‘It Never Goes Out’ 2011
Doo-no, na-noo, noo-na, noo-na, doo-na-noo-nana…
DAGGA DAGGA DUN!
HEY!!!
We’re letting iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit out!
I dunno, mate, this just fucking rocks, y’know?
One of the reasons I suddenly felt like I needed to get this list out as soon as possible was… I’m going on holiday on Sunday and I really wanted to get it sorted before then. But one of the other reasons is that I looked over The Necessary Evil Hall of Fame again before I updated it with new releases* and noticed that I’d ranked all three Hotelier albums as being equally as good. As the kids say: lol.
(*yeah, I still need to get around to that. Stay tuned to see if I rank ‘The Age of Pleasure‘ as the best Janelle Monae album!)
‘It Never Goes Out’ is an amazing album. As good a pop punk album as you’re ever likely to hear. My love for it was fresh in my mind when I wrote the Hall of Fame rankings, as I’d only recently ranked it on the previous year’s countdown. But seriously though, the places that the next two albums go leave that record in the motherfucking dust.
If you’re new to the band, definitely start off with their 2011 debut. You’ll be amazed by how good it is, and think to yourself “Wow, so right out of the gates they rock this hard?? I can’t imagine them getting much better than this…”.
28 N 43° 33′ 55.676″ W 72° 45′ 11.914″
‘Goodness’ 2016
OK, last coordinate song, I promise. These coordinates point to a lake that Holden used to visit during lunar eclipses, and includes singing by fellow helpers at that ‘Not Back to School Camp’. Including Tessa, who taught Christian the song that they’re singing.
Yeah, I know, probably a ridiculously high placing on this list, but it’s such a beautiful piece of music. No mere ‘skit’ or filler, this coordinate song more than any other really builds to the ‘Goodness’ album as a whole becoming a thematically rich masterpiece.
‘We Are All Alone’ 2009
Phew! Yeah, erm, sorry about that smell, but this is absolutely an emo song. Sure, The Hotel Year (and later The Hotelier) would probably describe themselves as an emo band, and have never been one of those “Yeah, erm, actually, all genres are reductive, yeah? And anyway, I’ve always thought there’s been a big hip-hop influence in our work” bands, likely comfortable to be described as ’emo’. But their later work would use the genre as a jumping off point, rather than stringent tropes to be respected. These precociously talented teenagers though? Yeah, they’ve been born in the emo, moulded by it, they wouldn’t cut their fringes until they were already adults. The lyrics even flip a line from the uber emo Brand New’s Soco Amaretto Lime, like they were conscious of paying their proper dues to their influences.
They don’t seem aware that they’re already surpassing them. Southern Discomfort is an incredibly constructed, artfully shaped piece of lowkey genius. I don’t think Brand New would ever craft a jittery time signature as ingenious as this, and they could never envision a euphoric dénouement as thrilling as this song’s “Now it’s pulling us apaaaaaaaart….” final stretch. Incredible.
‘Goodness’ 2016
In the night, we will celebrate cyclical spin
As we ritually send off the fire at both ends
Yet I’m blanketed, wet with the thought in my head
I don’t know what I want what I want’s where I’ve been
‘Goodness’ ends with basically a pastoral ballad – a Pastorball, if you will – and I am so here for it. Also, at 6 minutes 16 seconds, the second longest song they’ve ever done. I might argue that, like Opening Mail…, it feels a little redundant when set next to another song (#20) on the album throwing similar shapes far more successfully, but we’ll get to that soon.
‘Home, Like Noplace Is There’ 2014
Because of the song “Life In Drag,” I remember for a while everyone thought I was transgender. I understand it so it’s not really that strange, but I remember people thinking and saying it a lot, so I had to deal with it. It was just strange that I can’t talk about that without people thinking I’m transgender–not that that’s a problem, but it’s a little close minded.
Christian interviewed by RVA 2014/07/18
The history of transgender songs goes back pretty much as far as songs do themselves. In fact, that ‘trans’ is redundant: there’s a long history of people singing about their gender, whatever that gender may be. (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman; It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World; Just A Girl; Man! I Feel Like A Woman! (bit of a twofer, that one), I’m a maaaaaaaaan, yes I am and I can’t help but love you soooo... People won’t shut up about their fucking gender. Transgender people are so sure about their gender that they’re brave enough to stand up and correct society on the inaccurate gender they’ve already been assigned! And society says: OK. Hope you’re cool with us making murdering you legal for some reason. Imagine going through that risk, that effort just to conform to a gender? Any gender?? Most of us are just assigned one and just go along with it for the rest our our lives. While all the time asking “What even is this??”
Christian Holden is a cis dude. They have a cock, I believe. I’m still going to refer to them as ‘they’, because as you may or may not have noticed I’ve been referring to everyone as ‘they’ on this blog for around a year now. Gender is garbage. There have been precious few pieces of art that seriously and intelligently dissect gender from a cis perspective. I don’t mean crass “Trans people are awesome” virtue signalling, and I definitely (definitely!!) don’t fucking mean Born A Girl, which was one of the most controversial omissions from 100 Greatest Manics songs, because some people evidently love cis dudes fantasising about how easier it would be to be a chick. It would not be easier. Have you even considered the pocket space you’re about to lose?? Christian doesn’t necessarily want to change their gender. They accept that being a man means they “benefit from its privileges” even if they do so “while feeling disconnected and distrustful“, yet “my gender [is] something so deeply engrained in everything I do that I can’t help but deconstruct it”.
Life in Drag is at least an attempt to do that. Successfully? Mate, gender’s a fucking minefield, you ain’t sorting that shit out in a 144 second screamo song. But the doomed pursuit results in some of the strongest lyrics on the record. So, on any record, really? It suggests that the lost friend was perhaps transgender (“You wore an armour that covered your face”) or at least gender fluid (“And you wore binary like a badge of fucking honour”) and the singer is at least emboldened by the refusal of society’s constructs (“Genderfucked, dilated, stuck holding a stare/You taught me how to guard my self*”). That doesn’t work either though, the singer “felt weak in women’s wear”, as those old stereotypes still win out and it’s too hard to embrace femininity without feeling somehow lesser, somehow more vulnerable. The song even questions if such gender refusal may have contributed to the feelings that lead to the friend’s suicide: “I think you got carried away. Reached out your hand… it carried you away”.
(*’my self’, not ‘myself’, just like a later lyric asks “Who taught you how to hate your self?”. It makes a point of separating the generic person from the very self that needs nurturing and protecting)
It’s a fucking riot, is what I’m saying.
Lyrically…
The reason one of the band’s most celebrated songs doesn’t even crack the top 20 is because, musically, it does little for me. Sorry! Shouty thrashy throaty hardcore, not my jam. The lyric gets all of the flowers though.
‘Home, Like Noplace Is There’ 2014
Asked to be admitted
And they put a lock on your door
Subdued, medicated
Face to linoleum floor
Remember Southern Discomfort at #27? Well it’s back! In revisited form.
There are lyrical and occasional brief melodic references to the song the band released on their first EP. But while that original was an openly indebted (if infinitely superior) eulogy to someone falling out of love, five years later there’s a lowkey plot twist as the object of that songs yearning has been the tragic focus of their second album this whole time. I love that, given the sales of their debut EP it was a plot twist that maybe half a dozen people in the world would have grasped.
You carry an illness
Practically know it by name
It seldom speaks for you
You learned to tune it away
But it wasn’t easy
While the singer was initially “Just jealous because you fell out of love” back as a snotty nosed 17 year old back in 2009, in 2014 as a fully mature and world weary, erm, 22 year old (fuck, man…) they’re instead:
Just jealous because I tried
Mapping out your mind’s inconsistent ways
Tangled and untied
I watched your ends start to fray
You felt buried from the start, tearing you apart
Constricting the free beating of your heart
What is the singer jealous of this time though? After outlining that they were “Fond of their writing” in the previous verse, is the singer jealous of the subject’s suicide note, how they were able to map out, untangle and untie their mind’s ‘inconsistent ways’ with a clarity that the singer never managed? Or is the singer simply jealous that, after all the effort they’d put in trying to improve the subject’s situation, they’ve just found a brisk and immediate situation that didn’t involve them at all?
This song fucks.
23/22 A Rhapsody in Black/Blue
‘We Are All Alone’ 2009
Yeah, I’ve stuck them both together to make one super song. It’s my list, I’ll do what I want. Also, I’ve uploaded it to YouTube, so I own this art now. It’s mine.
Almost put it together with #39’s Searching to make a complete closing record trilogy, but that third part was so inferior to these first two (Rah-oad!) that it didn’t seem fair to pull the first two parts down. The absolute highlight(s) of that first EP, which is why we’ll be wishing the record a fond farewell on this list just outside the top twenty. An absolute emo epic which is, yes, a bit Black Parade coded in parts, but is still a musical achievement far ahead of anything else these literal children had yet produced.
‘Home, Like Noplace Is There’ 2014
It’s a strange sensation first finding out that the band’s semi-conceptual second album actually isn’t based on a true story. The albums arc, starting with an attempt to dissect the very act of a close friend committing suicide, through evading the funeral and any attempts to deal with the trauma, to considering the class inevitabilities of the situation and eventually – possibly – learning how to grieve, is an absolutely overwhelming exhibition of articulated emotional numbness that I think lacks many peers within the artform. And Christian made it all up! Sure, they say that the feelings were kinda based around an abusive relationship they were once in, and the album is almost a thought experiment of what might have happened, but it still basically lies! Christian is still friends with the ex!! That makes it even more insulting! It’s like finding out that, not only have they lied about the murder of 2Pac, but he actually had surgery and lived out the rest of his life as Herman Cain. And then died again! You feel that there is so many different betrayals happening!
It’s just… too good. It’s too fucking real! These are wounds that I have simply because listing to Christian’s words opened them up! These are my experiences! And they’re not even his?? Fuck you, art!
Dendron is the Greek word for ‘tree’, as there’s a naturalistic undertow to ‘Home…’ that gets fully over on the next album, ‘Goodness’. It’s in no way a happy or in any way resolving closer to the album, more the singer accepting that the loss is a part of them, digging through memories, feeling empathy as the grief now roots into everything like a tree’s roots.
Then, in the final third of the song, shit really heats up lyrically:
Part of your charm was the way you would push me from
All of the traps that I just couldn’t see
Figures the one that was there to have tripped you up
Would be the one that was set there by me
Wish I was there to say goodbye when you went away
Wish I was home, oh, but no place was there
The title makes sense right near the end. They say there’s no place like home, but what if there isn’t a place that feels like home? Then the final six lines are amongst the album’s best. Amongst the band’s best. Amongst any band’s best. What band do you like? Vampire Weekend?? No, be serious: what band do you like? Arctic fricking Monkeys?? Heh, alright Grandad, were they Chris Moyles’s pick of the week or something? Are you even aware that phones come with cameras now? Come on, stop pissing about: what band do you like? Wednesday? Yeah, Wednesday have never done a lyric close to this good:
I cut off my arm at the bone in solidarity
Capital teaches that there’s less when you share
And I felt the noose tighten up on your collar bone
And I felt the gun in the small of your back
Engraved in the stone by request and recurse of friends dead
Is, “Tell me again that it’s all in my head”
I mean… I’m trying to get this post finished in the next week, so I can’t spend as much time as I want showering class conscious chefs’ kisses over lines offering to harm their own body to take the work from the friend as “capital teaches that there’s less when you share”, so please let it cook in your own time. But those last two lines – the last lines on the entire record – taking a Spike Milligan joke and reframing it as an aching comment on the invisibility of depression?
…and then the chords of the first song start repeating, and you’re encouraged to go on the whole journey again.
‘Goodness’ 2016
Christian Holden said Sun was “the best song we’ve ever written”, which, as you can see, is incorrect. It’s really good though. At more than six and a half minutes, the longest song they’ve ever done – longer even than Rhapsody in Black/Blue, which is a fake song I made by sticking two epic songs together – and one that sees the band liberated by the presence of master producer Seth Manchester to make an unapologetically ambitious and full sounding, almost hymnal anthem. Personally, I’m not entirely sure this and the 6+ minute ‘Pastorball’ End of Reel (#25) necessarily need to be on the same album, and I’m pretty convinced which one I’d get rid of.
‘Fest 12 Split’ 2013
‘Goodness’ 2016
What’s this? Are you seeing double?? Four Settle the Scars??
Well, I committed to rank everything that the Hotelier/Hotel Year have ever released. In 2013, while still The Hotel Year, they released a song called settle the scar as part of a Soft Speak Records compilation release called ‘Fest 12 Split‘ alongside such luminaries as Modern Baseball* and Pentimento. The Fest “is an independent multi-day, multiple-venue underground music festival held annually in Gainesville, Florida“, up to Fest 22 later this year. The song was also included on the band’s final (at time of writing!) album ‘Goodness’ in 2016 (Christian: “I thought it fit and I kind of hate b-sides”), with some small lyrical tweaks (“had you dying for a gram” changed for “I guess I lost my stable hand”, for example). They’re essentially the same song, but different enough that they have to both be counted, and Seth Manchester’s incredible production provides the major difference and the deciding factor for the ‘Goodness’ version to be ranked higher.
(*insanely, Modern Baseball have actually been mentioned before on this blog, they made the 97th best album of 2016! “Some albums can’t help but be overshadowed by other records, and later in this list there’s an album by Hotelier that performs much the same tricks as [Modern Baseball], only infinitely better in every case“.)
Perhaps due to it originally stemming from even before ‘Home…’ was released, Settle the Scar is lyrically probably the one song on ‘Goodness’ that most closely resembles the previous album’s psychological cauterisations, and lyrically is amongst the best on the record. You know how in literally everyone on Earth’s deepest fantasies they’ve tried to imagine if ‘Home…’ was produced by Seth Manchester? Don’t lie, we’ve all done it. Well, this is probably the closest we’ll get.
You made a map of how you loved
And drew a perfect circle
I scribbled a venn diagram
I guess I lost my stable hand
Musically though? Mmmmmmmmmmmmm-wah! An inspired multi-part suite of aching guitar picking with occasional instrumental aneurisms. This is love this is love that I’m feeling.
Oh, and in a throwback to my 2016 review:
17 Title-Track (There is a Light)
‘It Never Goes Out’ 2011
Right. So it isn’t actually the title track then? So embarrassed for you right now.
And I would sit down on the ground.
And the system would say
“Move on! Move on! Move on! Move on!
There’s nothing to see here!
We’ve got to keep this engine going!
And this resistance has us slowing!
And if he’s more for you, then he is less for us,
And that’s exactly the kind of people we can’t trust!”And now I’m moving at the pace of the surrounding freezing air,
Desiring to spit straight into the face of billionaires.
But oh too damn far cowardly to do this on my own.
I’m clinging to my theory books, Nietzsche, and Thoreau.
Comrade Holden! Go easy on the Nietzche bollocks though, I can show you some reading that actually means something. Join the Party, you know you want to.
There is a slight issue with the Hotelier: their albums often dip ever so slightly toward the end in terms of quality. We’re not even in the top 15 and we’ve already had the whole second half of ‘Home…’, six of the final eight tracks on ‘Goodness’, and now we’ve had the final four tracks of their debut album. And we’ve had all of the tracks off their debut EP, but these are literal children we’re talking about, leave them alone you fucking weirdo. This extends to their opening and closing tracks: ignoring the debut EP to avoid accusations of child abuse, the band’s opening tracks are amongst their very best and we are yet to encounter one*, yet we have already seen all their closing tracks, and now the one from ‘It Never…’ is ranked as their best ever.
(*no, I’m not counting that flipping poem at #38 as the opening song of ‘Goodness’, you know what the opening song is on that album, and you’re just being intentionally and needlessly obtuse. It is not a good look on you. No wonder your parents are so disappointed in you)
Ah, but it’s a banger though, ain’t it? A proper, old fashioned, end of album freak out like the band didn’t otherwise bother with. I’ll even ignore the obvious Smiths reference, because as we all know only narcissists like The Smiths. Hey, don’t shoot the messenger.
“To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die”? That is rough writing, dog. Maybe give that another go? The cadence and rhythm is all over the fucking shop, bruv.
What gives me the right to criticise Morrissey’s lyrics? Two ears and a heart, mate, two ears and a heart.
‘It Never Goes Out’ 2011
Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
It’s safe to say we’ve always been actors
And from time to time
I think of what everything would be like
If we made one good scene
Apathetic time turns us into awkward passing nerves
Where nothing’s ever beautiful
And everything hurts
Dink, daddle-addle-ah!
‘Goodness’ 2016
Jesus, this is low. This song fucks so hard.
The reason it only just breaks the top 15 is that every song from this point on completes the duality of being an ultra banging track and also hitting me deep in the feels. Two Deliverances is an almost obscenely great song – I actually get butterflies in my soul the way Christian absolutely eats that “icons cluttering your bureau!” opening line – it doesn’t quite reframe my very being the way that the band’s very best songs do.
Hiding somewhere in your closet
Collecting moisture from your face
Your secret world speaks without words
And I feel clumsy and cumbersome in this place
It’s an emotional decision, and a dang shame, as Two Deliverances is one of the strongest lyrics on the album. The singer wishing that they could embrace religion in a similar way to how they wished they could embrace gender fluidity in the song at #24. Many people have read it as Christian sadly accepting that they couldn’t start a romantic relationship with someone as they would never be able to compare to the person’s religious icons, nor draw them away. I’m not sure any romantic relationship is ever suggested, and it’s more the singer wishing for the finality of religion that has obviously worked for the subject of the song (“But if I want them too/Will they speak to me soon?”). And the ‘two deliverances’?? Whether religion could deliver them both from the evil of unknowing?? To deliver the singer into religion and also into the subject’s good graces?? To deliver the subject out of religion and into the singer’s life??
I don’t fucking know, this isn’t Genius, I’m just here to inform you exactly how hard each song slaps.
I lie here for communion
Just waiting for one more
But in the quiet empty hours of my afternoon
What am I supposed to do?
What was I supposed to do?
And if I want them too
Will they come to me soon?
Will they fluctuate
Between midnight and past noon?
Was kind of banking on a future
That’d be involving you
But I couldn’t ask this of you
I couldn’t ask this
That “What am I supposed to do?? What was I suppose to do??” part? Yeah, butterflies in my soul again. Gives me a massive hard on as well, but I don’t want to lower the tone.
14 An Ode to the Nite Ratz Club
‘It Never Goes Out’ 2011
We would break into the factory
Our childhood autonomy
Had no respect for authority or property
Or your asshole neighbors’ complaints
And I still have all the keys
To the forklifts that we never got a chance to drive around
Or tear the building down ourselves
The Nite Ratz Club isn’t a real place?? Disappointing. Here are some pictures of some rats in a club anyway:
OK, this song has all the feels.
Ode… initially tells the story of teenage abandon, nostalgic for the times when you could just break into a factory with your mate and hang out like a couple of idiots. The days where you “thought we’d live forever”. Until the spell is broken, when things get a bit dark, man…
Until the night when it got way too serious
And you showed me your damaged wrists
And you broke down and we embraced
And nothing at that time meant more to me
And if I had only known that it would be the last time
We’d be on that level with one another
I would have never let you go
It’d be the last time because, as revealed by the reference to the song on Life in Drag (#24), the person that they shared the experience with will be the one whose suicide the next album will concern.
13 Our Lives Would Make A Sad Boring Movie
‘It Never Goes Out’ 2011
And to the people making life from lust, abusing trust,
And the fuckers who made fools out of the best of us:
You’ve swayed the public thought that they’re all that they’ve bought,
And otherwise they’re ugly people that will soon be dust.
And to the schools that brought us up and had us ‘socialized’,
Teaching us the world through hall passes and single file lines.
We are discouraged to ask questions or to raise a fist.
No wonder nobody can tell there’s something so much fucking bigger than this.
Yeah, fuck all that ‘feelings’ shit, let’s fucking rock for a bit.
If there’s one thing in your life that you’ll never forget, it’s that we’re dead in the future
but we’re
NOT!
DEAD!
YET!
‘It Never Goes Out’ 2011
Fuck! Back to the feels!
Weathered is an absolute wonder. Perhaps one of the best produced Hotelier tracks that doesn’t feature Seth Manchester, it’s a gorgeously crafted growing and expanding emotional centrepiece. It’s a perversely exhilarating paean to a love based around mutual self-harm (“I made art of myself”). Fuck it, I want this love! I want love that can produce moments of catharsis as thrilling as the “WOOO!” that Christian lets out toward the song’s end. Weathered also contains one of my favourite lyrics from any artist, ever.
Because that’s what I deal with every time
I lift up the back of my shirt and I show you
What you drew that night with a Swiss Army Knife
Saying “it was only maps of constellations”
I mean, that’s just fucking beautiful.
The song never says what was actually drawn (on the back of their back with a knife!!) if it wasn’t constellations. And I love that mystery. I love how the lines flow poetically. I love how it makes people slashing each other’s bodies sound like the most romantic thing ever. I love it I love it I love it.
‘It Never Goes Out’ 2011
Awwwww, just outside the top ten, and we bid fond adieus to the band’s 2011 debut album, as this is the last track from it to feature on the list.
I’ve highlighted a lot of the most incredible lyrics on songs recently on the list, but to be honest Vacancy‘s lyrics ain’t really all that. They’re decent, don’t get me wrong, but the reason this song is so high is because it fucking rocks my literal bollock off.
Ooooooooooh, we are the saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame…
Whoah-a-oh! We! Are! The! Same!
The case rests, your honour.
Single 2016
Aw man, why wasn’t I already a Hotelier fan when this album trailing single came out?? It would have been such an exciting time to be alive!
Released to promote the forthcoming ‘Goodness’ album, but not included (in this form!*) on the record itself, Goodness Pt.1 is a stark statement of intent, consisting of simply Holden, an acoustic guitar, an occasional piano and some atmospheric effects. Not only is it musically set apart from anything the band had done before, but the lyrics introduce more elements of nature and childhood memories that would now become more central to the band’s music. It’s beautiful, but just wait until they hear the album version!
Also, backed with ‘Rain’?? The fuck is that!? I can’t find it on the Bandcamp or on YouTube, is this countdown now incomplete?? Help me out.
(*so, in what form…? Dear reader, you shall soon be informed. A bit of patience, perhaps? Such over eagerness is not a good look on you. No wonder your parents are so disappointed in you)
The album promo is also an incredibly important moment in retrospect, as it was also used by the band to trial the work of producer Seth Manchester. He would obviously pass the exam with flying colours, and Manchester’s work on the following album would be of historically great quality. I asked Mr Manchester a few questions about their work on the album:
Were you aware of the band before you worked with them? Did they reach out to you or vice versa?
They reached out to me to do a single, “The Goodness, Pt. 1”, which we did in a day. I think they were ultimately scouting out if they wanted to do the record with me but didn’t mention it. We got along well and I think the process of building the ending on that single made them decide I’d probably be open enough to help push the record in a different, stranger direction than their prior one. A little less in the emo space and a little more indie rock space. I didn’t really have any context for the band until they scheduled two weeks to do the record which led me to their Pitchfork review and a whole internet of buzz around them.
Did you have any deeper affection for the band’s music or was it just a job that you wanted to as good as possible?
Being a fan rarely ever enters the equation and almost feels like a non sequitur when talking about making records – it doesn’t really affect the work and arguably gets in the way of it. It doesn’t matter if I like or don’t like something, it just matters that I can understand it. I don’t ever consider making records “just a job,” it’s more of an extension of who I am. The goal is to serve the vision of the artist and create a judgement free space that encourages creativity and experimentation. I try to outright avoid saying no to ideas, I used to be pretty bad about that but I’m getting better.
Did the band and you discuss what the album should sound like? Were you given quite tight instructions or do you think a lot of the sound was your idea?
Christian had a very specific idea of how he wanted the record to sound but didn’t necessarily know how to explain or approach it. My job was to figure out how to make the thing sound like the thing in his head. The spaciousness, the forward drums, the moments of strangeness and bold effect/edits. There wasn’t a specific set of instructions, it was more organic than that and got clearer as we pushed forward. When the record was released I got a lot of heat (as did the band) from their fans and actually received a bit of hate mail. It was the first time I ever got any emails from strangers about records I’d made and it was all negative which felt pretty wild. A lot of people loved the songs and hated the production but I’d like to think I made the record that the band (and especially Christian) wanted to make in the moment… after all the kickback, I wonder if they feel the same in retrospect, you might want to ask them?
Are you particularly proud of your work on the record? Is there a similar sounding record that you think you did a better job on?
I’m proud of the band and the chances they took on that record and appreciate that they thought I’d be the person to help bring that out of them. I don’t really think of records in terms of best or better and also try to keep my ego out of it. I could give you a list of my favourite records that I’ve been a part of but none of them would sound like the other and that’s sort of the point.
Own up, you’re already working with the band on a secret follow up, aren’t you? I won’t tell anyone, I promise.
I wouldn’t tell you if I was, but I can tell you that I’m not…
(Yeah, that next album definitely confirmed)
‘Goodness’ 2016
You in this light feels like a thing I can’t remember
Clutching you close your body felt like December
Shook awake early from the rocks of your tremors
Tracing my thumb over the miles of your memory
Now a bit brighter with a smile and a laughter
One in the same and what am I to be after
Dancing in private with the concept of never?
You in this light feels like a thing I can’t remember
DAGGA-DANG-DAGGA-DANG-DAGGA-DANG-DANG-DANG!
Again, I’m going to ‘Go There’: ‘Goodness’ might be the band’s best album. It might also contain their weakest lyrics. But the power of these songs! The sheer inventiveness of these songs! The fucking production of these songs!! The dagga-dang-dagga-dang-dagga-dang-dang-dang!! Why aren’t people talking about how this album puts the dang in the dagga-dang-dagga-dang-dagga-dang-dang-dang??
8 The Scope of All This Rebuilding
‘Home, Like Noplace There Is’ 2014
Oh, hey ‘Home…’, not seen you for a minute.
Scope… is one long, frustrated, anguished and impassioned cry at the unfairness of being expected just pick yourself up and carry on after life changing trauma. In Vacancy (#11) the band decried that “You can’t fix this/Cause it’s burning down”. Well, Scope… discovers that: Tough. You have to. Off you go. Rebuild.
You cut our ropes, left the umbilical
And now I carry around this weight of broken hope
And I can’t retrace and I’ve lost my hold
And blame myself ’cause that is all I’ve ever known…Then you cut our ropes, left the umbilical
And now I’m lost and I can’t take this path back home
Send a birthday card, leave a one-way note
I lied, I’m sorry, this isn’t easy, I don’t know
It finds Christian immersed in the anger, denial, bargaining and depression stages of grief (and it’s arguable whether acceptance is ever reached). Lyrically, it’s impeccable, and it completes the duality by being an astonishingly accomplished and layered song considering its 146 second run time. There are more ideas in Scope…‘s two and a half minutes than almost every other band manages in their entire career.
What band do you like?
The 1975??
Fuck off, mate, if you weren’t going to take the question seriously I’d prefer if you just didn’t bother.
‘Home, Like Noplace Is There’ 2014
You came out, started bruising
Find it tough to admit when your losing…Dissociate from touch
You’re tilting to pull the others with you
Posed Shakespearean skull, we see in different pictures
You play the imperial
Stealing the power to waste away
You took the comfort from the lights in her soul
Projected map of the body
It’s crass, abject, colonial
You passed, disease presented to you at birth
Held underwater, told to scream your self-worth
It wasn’t good enough
Entrust the secrets to the backs of your arms
Killing the self as to protect it from harm
Just an absolutely stunning lyric.
Well, not ‘just’ that: also an incredibly constructed song that somehow evolves into a stirring anthem. But… holy shit, those lyrics though?
An even better and more poetic dissection than Life in Drag (#24) of the late friend’s gender struggles, and how the difficulties accepting society’s ideologies can push someone over the edge. Every fucking line in this song should be a tattoo.
Also, the closing interview with some unnamed child about how they would help a friend who was struggling really fucked with my idea of time. “I’d just text him“?? How does a kid know what texting is?? Wasn’t texting only invented, like, six months ago??
‘Home. Like Noplace There Is’ 2014
And on New Years, you resolved to make your chaos external
Yeah, another tattoo of that please.
In Framing sees the singer go over past instances of the late friend’s struggles with various addictions (“Well, you fell for the first option presented of new rebirth”), and how these addictions soon swallowed them up. Their attempts and dulling the various pains caused by both society and their own depression.
Alleviate, erase failed attempts at obstructing machines
Got drained when the crutch became vampiracy
Bit off more than could chew and then swallowed it whole
I choked on your temper when you felt alone
When you felt alone
These memories includes ambulances (“And the sirens cry loudly/I am reflexive, I cry loudly”) and visits to the hospital (“You lifted the towel, your wrist showed the bone/I held my breath in the ER, I swayed as I stood”). And includes the devastatingly, pitch black darkly hilarious line “You caved and you asked, “Is this coming of age?””.
And the answer is… yes…?
We’ve all been through this, haven’t we? Maybe we’re the friend/partner worried about their friend’s descent into collapse. Maybe we’re the friend themselves.
Wish I had some sort for reaction for this…
Oh yeah!
‘Goodness’ 2016
Heeeeeeeeeeey, I told you we’d get there!
I also wrote a perfectly judged and well thought out review of this song back in 2016:
The next thing I wrote was “‘Goodness’ is the best rock album I’ve heard in years”…
Yeah, I was giving points back then. Don’t @ me. The album ended up with 2’741, if you’re wondering.
I can tell from the background that I took those photos at my Mum’s house. She must be so proud of me.
An absolutely exceptional piece of music. Imagine having already heard the gentle acoustic wonder of Goodness Pt.1 (#10) trail the album back in February 2016, to be served with this almighty slice of perverted stadium rock when that album arrived three months later. The drums seem to be summoning horseman, the distorted guitar chimes sound like religious ceremonies taking place on surrounding mountains, Christian is in the very room with you on one line and delivering the next line from a sermon in the world’s biggest church. It’s perhaps the greatest example of the astonishing production job that Seth Manchester does on the band’s (at time of writing!) final album, one of the greatest works of production I’ve ever heard on a guitar album and one so good it convinced me to follow Mr Manchester’s career from that point forth.
Lyrically, the song sees The Hotelier placing their ducks back in a row mentally, after the emotional and spiritual draining of ‘Home…’. Christian attempts to centre themselves once again in the world around them, feeling small in the magnitude of the universe where all human anxieties seem insignificant.
Little bird on the side of sidewalk
Sings me hymnals of comfort in pain
Said “Give me you, all disarmed and uncertain
And I promise that I’ll do the same”
And it sounded like something you’d sayIf we spin without compass in circles
Will we fall in the same exact place?
It’s a different message than what the birds were saying previously…
#spoiler
‘Home, Like Noplace Is There’ 2014
‘You’re depressed’. It’s an oronym, bitches.
I called in sick from your funeral
The sight of your body made me feel uncomfortable
I couldn’t recognize your shell…I called in sick from your funeral
The sight of your family made me feel responsible…I called in sick from your funeral
Tradition of closure nearly felt impossible
There were always clues, weren’t there? Why were they suddenly so focused on putting on their things in order, with “fixing up their bed” and “organizing drawers”? Writing notes and returning gifts “from when we met/Back when you weren’t so upset”? Couldn’t you have done something? OK, but couldn’t you have done something more ? You tried to tell them your issues, why couldn’t they “just listen to the problems had/With problems of yours?”. Why didn’t that work?! You kept telling them how they were always bumming you out!
You pined for warmth as they said
“Your lack of love for your dear self
Is sapping all of us here out!
Trace your roots back to the ground
Work out the knotholes for yourself”
Or maybe, as you later find out, it was simply always going to finish this way?
And I found the notes you left behind
Little hints and helpless cries
Desperate wishing to be over
So yeah, pretty heavy stuff.
Another ‘100% Tattoo’ song, but perhaps my favourite thing about the ‘Home…’ highlight is how it’s actually one of the most conventional rock songs the band ever wrote (well… as adults at least…). It’s fucking spectacular, don’t get me wrong, but it could also be the highlight of the last Kings of Leon album and wouldn’t necessarily sound out of place, musically. It reminds me of early Manics
in the way it attempts to Trojan Horse extremely challenging and provocative lyrical content inside a perversely radio friendly rock song that’s in deference to all the ‘correct’ tropes. I’m telling you, mate, if they changed that exhilarating thrash break down half way through the song into an elongated guitar solo and you would have had 60’000 people singing along to “A conscious erasure of working class background/Where despair trickles down” at Glastonbury in 2015.
Ah shit, I forgot about that class background line, I thought I’d almost finished this entry!!
Christian is extremely class conscious. He calls himself an anarchist because, like all anarchists, he hasn’t yet totally thought it through and realised that Communism makes more sense. Essentially, both anarchists and Communists are aiming for the same classless society, but I think anarchists are guilty of utopian thinking in their belief that this classless society will just arise spontaneously, while Communists accept that there needs to be a transition period. But that’s beside the point right now.
In Your Deep Rest, Christian references the societal problems with depression, a ‘disease’ (which, as I’ve previously argued, I’m not 100% convinced actually exists in most sufferers) that’s always just tossed aside as a ‘chemical’ issue. so that the workers can continue in their task to produce surplus value.
So much of what makes up people’s lives are governed by the social structure and political structure; really, just how power is set up in their world. And I think power is political. It’s completely political when I’m talking about someone who took their life because they come from a working class family where alcoholism is more prevalent. If you grow up with alcoholic parents, they’re more likely to not be able to face their feelings head on in a way that’s healthy. On top of that, that background might teach someone the way to attach themselves to certain people in their life and use them as commodities in their own life instead of treating them as someone who is loved and needed in their life, because that’s how we’re taught to view each other in the world.
Christian interviewed by RVA 2014/07/18
So, basically, what I’m saying is: Comrade Christian!!
‘Goodness’ 2016
Sustaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain!
Lyrically, an impressionistic mood piece that continues one of ‘Goodness’s themes of generational differences/connections, and also of the affect the passage of time has on emotions, both positively and negatively.
But, mate, I don’t fucking know, it’s just an absolutely incredible piece of music. That first verse delivered as if from far away or in an adjoining room? The way the musical backing drops out and the quiet frames Christian’s voice to be even more poignant and vulnerable? The way that Christian starts to introduce ‘So stay’ in place of ‘Sustain’ later in the song and it becomes impossible to work out which one is being said when?
This is as good as rock music gets.
‘Goodness’ 2016
Disability Decade Greatest Song of the Past 10 Years, 2023
You do not have to be good.
Mary Oliver: ‘Wild Geese’
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Sophie’s on the bunk overhead reading Mary Oliver
While I lay still in my bed
That’s when I see you there
Fawn, doe, light snow
Make me feel alive
Make me believe that all my selves align
Fawn, doe, light snow
Spots on brown of white
Make me believe that it is all a lie
When do I just give in and dedicate this blog entirely to how important this song is for me? It already seems like I won’t shut up about it. It was the sound of my recovery from disability, it will always be the soundtrack to me not wanting to die. When I was counting down the best songs released in the ten years since my disability, it kind of had to be number one.
Aside from my personal connection though, it truly is a spectacular song. The composition, the production, the way that every single piece of instrumentation does not exist a molecule more than it needs to and compliments every other immaculately realised factor in the song. Like how John Peel described Teenage Kicks: There’s nothing you could add to it or subtract from it that would improve it. It’s conceptually perfect. Next to some of the more complex and challenging lyrical journeys taken by other songs on this countdown, Soft Animal is superficially near nothingness. Singer sees deer, deer seems super chill, hunters arrive, deer is shot dead. However, it’s another piece of metaphorical and impressionistic world building of the type that dominates ‘Goodness’, contemplating existential questions far to large for me to cover here.
In researching this post, I also came across the idea that the deer in the song may be the reincarnation of the singer’s Granny from the album’s previous song (#40): “You can presume that my grandmother dies, and then there’s this rebirth with this deer that I feel uniquely connected to in some way,. It’s the beginning of this Taoist way of interacting with the world”. Yeah, more hippy shit. Makes lines like “The ring around your mother’s heart” make more sense in terms of generational attachments. Makes me like the song more. Doesn’t make me like Opening Mail for My Grandmother more though, that song still bores me to tears. “Grows saccharine then falls apart”?? tell me about it!
Two guitars. Drums. Voice. It’s impossible to make a more outstanding statement using only those elements.
But is it the best Hotelier song though?
Like most of ‘Goodness’, lyrically it just isn’t outstanding. Christian’s lyricism is one of the two main reasons* that The Hotelier are the greatest rock band of the 2010s**, and on the band’s (at time of writing!) final album, their transition from micro emotions to macro philosophy constrict the lyrics’ soul collisions ever so slightly. The lyrics are 8 or 9/10 deep musings, rather than 11/10 life savers.
(*the other reason is that they rock fucking balls
**21st century/all time)
It’s an astonishing piece of music, but it fails perhaps the most central Hotelier test:
I’m not tempted to get any of the lyrics tattooed across my chest.
1 An Introduction to the Album
‘Home, Like Noplace Is There’ 2014
Open the Curtains
An introduction to the album?? Too right it is, you cheeky cunts!
The curtains are opened as if we are starting the beginning of a play. And while Soft Animal may have ended with the stage direction “Exit, pursuing deer”, here the tale begins as a central character, the deus ex machina, the protagonost and the antagonist, looks out of the window that will soon be the scene of their ultimate expression. It’s also a caring demand though: fuck’s sake, dude, get out of bed, put some clothes on, have a shower, open the curtains, you need to get over this. Birds outside, that would later serenade Christian with “hymnals of comfort in pain” on the #5 entry, here instead insist that they “”Tear the buildings down”.
Open the curtains
Singing birds tell me, “Tear the buildings down”
You felt blessed to receive their pleasant sound
Things that break make you cringe inside yourself
There’s a child counting stars in their time-out of their day
In the corners of their frame, they’re encased
In the losing of a grain of themselves
Adulthood fucking sucks, right? Growing up and being socialised into capitalist society simply means the breaking of all the promises you subconsciously made to yourself. You’re no longer allowed to just count stars as you try to unravel the magnitude of the universe. And the more you nostalgically yearn for the freedoms of childhood, the more you realise the grain envelop those old photos and the further away you realise you’re growing.
Pushed against the ebb and flow
Wave good-bye and watch it go
Instead of wasting all this blood, sweat and tears attempting to push for your own realisation, trying to opt out of neoliberalism’s psychocompulsions, slowly grinding yourself down as the giant rock you’re trying to hold back has already scraped off your skin and is now polishing your pained bones, what if you could just… nope out? Say goodbye and watch it go? Solve all of your problems in one fell swoop?
An Introduction to the Album is the most nuanced and realistic examination of suicide ever committed to the English language. The song is in places a glorious celebration of suicide’s immediate problem solving, while honest and heartbreakingly vulnerable when assessing the impact such a shortcut to happiness would have on those closest to you.
Well, show me the honest, proper way
To disarm predatory gaze
Sucking dry, never satiated
The song manages to nail this balance by giving equal time to the reasoning of the person who has found a lifehack to make the problems stop, and the singer who will spend the rest of the album wrestling with whether they should be dealing with trauma or guilt. Could they have stopped this? Should they have stopped this? How could they have stopped this?? Life has sucked them dry. Could life have, like, not done that?
You’ve been misused, been rewired
You’re short-circuiting now
The way Christian wraps their vocals around the lyrics on Introduction…, the way they demand the syntax bend to their will, makes the song near impossible for mere mortals to properly sing along to. But try telling that to the crowd at every Hotelier gig this last decades.
Then the song takes things up a notch, as Christian belts out the lines through popping sinuses as if it’s the last chance they’re ever going to have to have you hear them :
Just remember when you’d call
Me to come
Take a deep breathAnd
Then
Jump
And then it happens. One of the greatest, most profound and meaningful lines of a song that you will have ever heard. Seven syllables that explain everything that’s ever gone wrong in your life, grant you vision to see all the problems that you are about to face, and yet convince you that everything is going to work out. And it doesn’t contain any words:
Whoa-oh-whoa
Oh-whoa-oh-oh
The perverse, unhealthy euphoria of suicide. The chance to escape the gross and suffocating limitations of the human body. Bodies that you’ve spent so long twisting into yourself they have become misshaped and concave. Man, this spiritual plane sucks!
So fragile are bodies
So concave
Work in self-destructive ways
That’s a joke, isn’t it? Yeah. I’m having that. That’s a joke. You heard it here first: An Introduction to the Album is a fucking hilarious song. The Hotelier are comedians. I’m dying. Oooooooooh, bad choice of phrase…😬
Yeah, bodies have a disgustingly human insistence of working in self-destructive ways. Not accepting capitalism’s reality will likely get you killed, or at least unfed and homeless. And not explicitly picking a side on the socially constructed gender binary? Yeah, that’s a self-destructive paddling. But also (tee-hee!) bodies sometimes work in self-destructive ways (chortle!) by (GUFFAW!) literally throwing themselves from a window and destroying themselves!! ROFLcopter.
Whoa-oh-whoa
Oh-whoa-oh-oh
Meh, you had to be there.
You shot from the hip and missed
Detaching from all of this
In physical pictures you remain
Spiral ’round yourself in figure-eight
I recoil at every new beginning
You shoot from the hip, you try being honest, away with all of societies rules and regulations, right?? Just try and live you’re life truthfully and… Nah, fuck that, living truthfully only makes you more deep rest. You’ve been too honest with yourself, should have lied like everybody else? There’s one sure fire way to detach from all of this struggle…
And then. The Line:
Yeah, my pictures went hard back in ’18…
I searched for a way out
Don’t we all?
Isn’t this it? Is this maybe what we’re all doing? What percentage of us don’t feel trapped, don’t feel inhibited, don’t feel stressed by the bending of life? What percentage of us are truly content? What percent of us are truly happy? If you are happy, should you be happy? Isn’t your happiness not reliant on a whole Kenyan petting zoo of elephants in your room/head that you have to ignore less you consider the exploitation and human greed to get you to where you are?
Aren’t we all searching for a way out?
Not a ‘way out’ of life/the window necessarily. Just… out… of this… y’know…?
Hasn’t the singer’s friend found the perfect solution?
Then, the lyrics remind you that it’s a Christian Holden song:
Existentialist recall
Turn in all, all dichotomies and truths that I gave
I felt wrong in many ways
Yeah, motherfucker, existentialist dichotomies and shit! What does being alive even mean any more?? Were these philosophies shared with the deceased? Is the singer somehow implicit? Did they shoot from the hip and miss? Oh and you know what else is a ‘dichotomy’? Gender roles, bitch!! Yeah, Christian’s slipping in more of their woke trans ideology.
Didn’t heal
It just got harder everyday to be still
To be passing through the throes
In a daze
Feeling heavy
Feeling cold in my skin
In my hand-me-downs
Wearing everything thin
So who’s singing here? Is it now the deceased explaining how steadily more difficult life got*? Is it the singer trying to deal with the never retreating grief that they’re now condemned to? Is it both of them, equally struggling with mental issues passed down from their parents**?
(*while they were just concerned with passing
#WokeTransIdeology
**Or ‘hand-me-downs’, if you prefer. Seriously, it doesn’t even count as a Hotelier song if there isn’t at least a bit of generational trauma)
No. They’re the same person. And that person is Alexander Leeson Franchise-Palmer.
The song is a duet between the two contradictory parts of my mind. Rationally, I know that I shouldn’t commit suicide, I know how many lives it would destroy, I know that it would cause a lot of people a lot of trauma. But, emotionally… God, it just makes sense, doesn’t it?? Everything would just… stop! It would all be over. Everything would be so easy.
Thank God for my antidepressants…
And the pills that you gave didn’t do anything
I just slept for years on end…
Yo where my antidepressant homies at!? More on the medicalisation of societal issues! Most relatable line in song history, ammi right? Well, second to the next bit:
…fuck!
And the band know that Christian swearing is always their cue to lose their fucking shit. The song collapses in a cacophony of anxiety. Up until now the track has been pointed, exact in its delivery. As earnest, steady and as important as a well thought out suicide note. For the first three and a half minutes it’s nothing but Christian’s voice, a guitar and an electric organ, but on that “fuck!” the song explodes into life as it loses its steady hand. Everything sinks in and the song starts screaming in pain. What the fuck is going on! Christian screams the rest of the song from a pit in their soul I don’t think many people in history have been able to reach into:
Well, so if I call should I beg?
‘Cause I’m desperate here
A couple steps from the edge
I can’t seem to burn bright enough
I’m cold and I’m left alone
The worst thing you can say to a depressed is “Call me anytime you feeling down”. Really? Call and say what? “I wanna kill myself, can you tell me how nice I am?”? You want us to beg for your existential validation?? Fuck that: we’re fucking desperate and we’re a couple of fucking steps from the fucking edge.
Then, on “I’m cold and I’m left alone”, that choir comes back in:
Whoa-oh-whoa
Oh-who…
Except…
There are words this time…
We’re
All
Alone
Yeah, that part does things to me. And remember what the band’s debut was called?
Grab a hold
I know I said to not
What the fuck do I know?
I had a chance to construct something beautiful and I choked
I choked
I choked
I choked
I just can’t with this song.
So, yeah, pretty nice little tune, 7.5/10.
The New Album Rankings
OK, so now we can do this scientifically! Each track gets a point score based on the placing on this list, then the total album score is divided by its number of tracks total, and the lowest score will be offcially their best album. I’m not counting ‘We Are All Alone’ because I’m not into ranking children, you weirdo:
So that’s the end of that.
Thanks for reading, and thanks to u/GodtheBartender for their record collection that I could use as the blog header picture and pretend it’s my own. Thanks a million to Seth Manchester for letting me ask him a few nosey questions, I hope they don’t regret the Pandora’s box they’ve just opened. And thanks to The Hotelier for helping me produce so much #content.
Also, since I didn’t have time nor real knowledge to go into the band’s changing members, here’s the timeline from Wikipedia for you completionist perverts.
Necessary Evil 
I just spent like 30 minutes reading through this and I don’t even have words to express how deeply this touched, like, my soul? Overall we have the same opinions however putting Two Deliverences behind OLWMASBM is diabolical.
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