EP REVIEW: Lost Lights – Hawthorne Heights

It’s somehow been 20 years since HAWTHORNE HEIGHTS gave us the emo anthem to top all emo anthems with Ohio Is For Lovers. Their debut album The Silence In Black And White remains an exemplary staple of the genre – the dark and brooding lyrics, the clean-and-screamed vocals, the sweeping fringes. It’s the template that the genre thrived on and that really helped it reached the stratospheric heights it did. But alas, the world has changed and so too have the tides of alternative music. Keen to recapture that original magic though, it seems that JT Woodruff and co aren’t interested in changing with everyone else.

With three singles released already from the EP, HAWTHORNE HEIGHTS made their intentions clear. Although there’s a darkness in their lyrics, which focus a lot on loneliness and the tribulations of modern life, they balance it with an effortless lightness by making tracks like Dandelions incredibly catchy. And so was the case with The Storm. And again with Lucerne Valley…

Although Lost Lights comprises just five tracks, patterns emerge that make each of the tracks interchangeable at best, carbon copies at worst. Pick any one verse, chorus and pre-chorus from across the EP and they’ll form a coherent song. It seems as though almost every track sticks to an identical structure of short verses, large choruses and a pre-chorus that gears up to one final euphoric singalong. But the real emphasis is on choruses with these songs, so much so that the likes of The Storm hurries through verses to get to the next opportunity for crowd participation. 

The saving grace is that they’re still great at what they do, and while the EP has its issues, there’s no denying that the songs are infectious and will give live shows new singalongs that aren’t Niki FM. Nostalgia is a fantastic thing though and at a certain point you have to wonder if they’re better served reliving the glory days, rather than further diluting their songbook. 

Rating: 6/10

Lost Lights is out September 8 via Pure Noise Records.

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