English indie pop band Little Comets are among the genre’s most endearingly experimental acts to emerge in recent years, taking a sunny pop formula and mixing in complex guitar lines, time signature hiccups and other art rock moves that seem out of place among big catchy hooks. The best thing about their music has always been its lightness, though, a vibrant accessibility despite their many off-beat flourishes. Unfortunately, this is something that they struggle to bring out on their third album Hope Is Just a State of Mind. What had once seemed so effortless now seems broken and confused, signalling not a band that has lost its touch, but a band that wants to remove itself from the stifling sound with which it’s done so much. It’s a shame they feel that way.
Album opener “My Boy William” builds slowly into a wild 3/4 guitar solo, a passage that plays to all of Little Comets’ greatest strengths: melodic, explosive, groovy, and a just little cerebral. It’s the same style that’s all over the band’s joyous, hook-laden debut In Search of Elusive Little Comets and most of its 2013 follow-up Life Is Elsewhere but curiously downplayed on the rest of their third record, replaced with meandering slow tunes (“The Blur, the Line & the Thickest of Onions”, “The Daily Grind”) and enjoyable but disjointed diversions (“Salt”, “Don’t Fool Yourself”, “Effetism”).
The relatively upbeat and dynamic “Formula” and “Wherewithal” resemble Ra Ra Riot or Dirty Projectors at their most pop-minded, while “Little Italy” at times takes after the tropical lightness of Vampire Weekend. Many of the record’s influences are easily traceable, with singer Robert Coles’ smooth, reggae-inflected yelp a direct descendent of that of Sting (displayed most acutely on the nearly a capella intro of the aforementioned “My Boy William”) and the band’s intersection of plucky guitar, deep bass and funky, unique drum rhythms reminiscent of fellow-Brits Foals. This quality previously made their music breezy and accessible, but on Hope Is Just a State of Mind their influences seem cluttered around less expressive songs, and therefore less coherent and a little more grating.
That senseless, structure-less abandon is the album’s greatest distraction. “Formula”, “Fundamental Little Things”, and “Little Italy” are pop songs with bridges for choruses, giving them no center and effectively negating their otherwise infectious charms. Other songs sound samey with Talking Heads-style palm-muted guitar, dance drums and floaty piano or rhythm guitar chords. This of course means that the hooks are the most memorable parts of each track, but with bland or ineffectual choruses, much of Hope Is Just a State of Mind fails to make any kind of impression at all. It’s a far cry from the band’s older singles like “Joanna” and “One Night in October” which made maximum impact with lively, defined hooks and intricate, engaging instrumentation.
Truthfully, there is plenty to like about Hope Is Just a State of Mind, but the band’s optimistic individualism and tight compositional skill are sorely missing in no small part. Little Comets’ greatest misstep is in draining much of the fun from their music with dour, mid-tempo songs and drawling ballads, moves that, to be fair, result in good pieces like the propulsive “Don’t Fool Yourself” and the sonically interesting “The Blur, the Line & the Thickest of Onions”, but bring down the bouncy pop flavors that they so easily pull off to grand effect. Hope Is Just a State of Mind isn’t a bad third album, but it hints at a band growing tired of their established formula without the dedication to make a full stylistic switch at once. It’s an album made by a band in transition. The only thing we can hope is that they get where they’re going sooner rather than later.