Hotel Hotel, The Sad Sea

review by dave heaton

The instrumental group Hotel Hotel’s latest album opens with a sense of peace but also expectation, fitting for a song called “From Harbour”, the beginning of a maritime-themed album. Underneath the calm demeanor of the song a guitar is squirming around at the bottom, summoning up thoughts of wind, waves, ghosts or something stranger. The sense of expectation builds over the next couple songs, picking up a sense of fear, especially on “Mary Celeste”, named of course after the unmanned ghost ship of 1872.

The song after that is where fear builds to an explosive moment; appropriately, it’s a song with the parenthetical title “Black Sabbath”. This is the band at its heaviest, but still mood, texture and the individual playing of the group’s five musicians (plus two, here) are not lost. That last quality is one thing that sets Hotel Hotel apart from their contemporaries. Crystal-clear playing and a dominant mood do not have to be at odds, as they prove.

The trajectory of the album heads towards a calmer state over the last few songs, but a distinctly unsettled one. So not calm at all, I guess: a deceptive tranquility. After all, the last two titles are “The Captain Goes Down With the Ship (Sinking)” and “The Captain Goes Down With the Ship (Drowning)”.

The song titles and giant-squid cover-art help the album tell a seafaring tale, but the music itself feels broader than that, in mood and emotion. The album title, though, is apt and simply stated: The Sad Sea.

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