Chronique album : Orlando Weeks – Hop Up

Less than two years later A Quickening, his first solo album, the former leader of the Maccabees is already coming back to us for a new opus. This one, both in its theme and musically, is a continuation of its predecessor.

And A Quickening dealt with fatherhood, with the joy but also with the anxiety which ensue from it, this new album develops this subject in a more joyful and much less anxious way. Musically, Orlando Weeks continues in the register of an elegant and sophisticated pop, sometimes quite theatrical, always emotional. His particular tone of voice works perfectly for this musical register and gives this record a really special flavor.

Hop Up is a record which embraces a very large number of musical genres without the album becoming inconsistent. If it starts with an excellent title, Deep Down Way Out, which evokes the McCartney Wings period and that we then expect an album in this register, it will however be the only song in this style.
The rest of the tracklisting evolves between dreamlike oddities (Yup Yup Yup Yup), pop-jazzy (the pure wonder that is No End To Love), classic pop (High Kicking, Big Skies Silly Faces with Katy J Pearson) and music that seems to be inherited from sophisticated 80’s pop. We think in particular of Look Who’s Talking Now (a title that exudes an absolutely touching old-fashioned charm), Bigger, Silver or Way To Go.

At first, these pieces, in particular Bigger and its intro which might seem out of date, seem a bit kitsch and dated but it would be regrettable to stick to only one listening because we will then miss the beauty of titles much more subtle than there is. appears at first glance.
And Hop Up At first glance sounds like a good pop disc, it gradually becomes much more than that because only multiple plays will reveal the subtlety and luxuriance of the arrangements. We are dealing here with an extremely complex record, particularly interesting in the forms it espouses. Orlando Weeks confirms here the qualities seen on his first solo album but surpasses them in a striking way.