Originally issued as a physical release in April 2013, This Yesterday Will Never End by Hawk and Dove has spent the last year in limbo prior to being reissued this month in digital formats. The Brooklyn six-piece electric-folk outfit meshes together a sonic palate that too often maps a bell-shaped curve from a whisper to a wail and back. Airy and unconstrained, Hawk and Dove’s odes to determinism (“Things We Lost So Far”), personal mythology (“Some Hotel” and its counterpoint, “How She Became a Tree”) and teen brooding (“Electricity”) range from pointed to perfunctory.
Opening with a one-two punch of anti-war bombast, This Yesterday Will Never End quickly digresses into philosophical teenage ramblings. The band’s strength is perhaps also their undoing: too reliant upon dynamic changes, guitar squalls and each player earning their due time before coalescing as a unit, banal lyrics are interjected to match a lingering melody. At 13 songs, This Yesterday Will Never End lingers too long. By “The River”, front man Elijah Miller himself sounds as if he’s treading water. For the listener, the payoff never surfaces.