There’s A Light: For What Must We Hope?

Hope is like a lighthouse. It acts as a beacon of light in the darkness of night. It helps captains guide their boats through stormy seas and dark nights. On the other hand, that light can lead astray even the strongest of sailors as they crash into the rocks below. Hope isn’t a one-size-fits-all emotion, it comes in all shapes and sizes. So, how should we see hope? It’s a question THERE’S A LIGHT ask of their listeners on f̶o̶r̶ ̶w̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶m̶a̶y̶ ̶I ̶h̶o̶pe̶? for what must we hope?.

Across it’s hour-long runtime, you’ll come to your own conclusion on whether hope guides us to good or bad shores. But in order to ask such questions, one must have a good grounding themselves. So, what does hope mean to THERE’S A LIGHT?

“Hope will get you through a lot of shit, and it will catch you if you’re lost, like if you’re not happy about your job or something like that, you hope for better days and it makes it easier,” explains guitarist Markus Dold in the comfort of his home studio, before countering, “but hope can also be a really bad thing in your life, because if you hope for something a lot, like you hope to get the girl next door and then two days later you see her with another guy, your whole world is destroyed. So hope is both sides of the coin and that’s what we want to express with this album.”

The duality of hope can help and hinder us throughout life. We’ve all spent hours hoping for something better and we’ve all felt the optimism and pessimism that can come with that. For an album that was partly written and recorded during the height of COVID-19, you can’t help but wonder if it’s themes of hope came from such a dark time? “It was maybe in our minds, because we have to hope for something for better times, but it’s not the main reason for the album at all. It was not that important, it’s more than just a pandemic, because we all have a lot of things going on besides this, like everybody has their own life to live and things to get through.”

It’s this universal understanding that lends itself to the album’s title. Part question and part statement, it’s inspired by vocalist and bassist Andreas Richau’s fascination with 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant and his theory of collectivism. A theory the vocalist shared with his band and captured their imaginations. “It has a lot to do with philosophy, like all the philosophers are asking a lot of questions about hope. Immanuel Kant is one of the main reasons for this title, and that idea of should I hope or should we hope,” Markus explains. “I think our social community only works if everybody has something to believe in, because if you have a group of 10 people and eight of them are saying it’s not working and two are saying it will, they won’t do anything because more of them would say it’s shit. If you have a whole group, say ‘yeah, we can work it out’ you will be putting everybody’s lives forward so it’s a collective thing.”

Like the themes they explore, THERE’S A LIGHT – completed by drummer Jan Lüftner, guitarist David Christmann and multi-instrumentalist Jonas Obermüller – create music collectively. They bring ideas to the table individually, tinkering with them as a group until they’re all satisfied. It’s the freedom their post-rock allows, particularly when creating a concept album that features vocals on just three of it’s eleven tracks, to truly explore emotion in sound. For them, they’re giving back the freedom to their listeners.

“It really gives the people a chance to think about the songs, because if there’s no lyrics that tell you a song is about love, everybody can think for themselves,” beams Markus, pleased at his band’s ability to shake off the shackles language can lock you in, expanding, “if you only have instrumentals you can’t really lead someone in a direction, but you have titles. Like Magnolia, it sounds like spring, it sounds like blooming, it sounds like happiness and that’s a kind of hope but maybe another person will think about Magnolia and go ‘okay, it’s just a tree’ but because there’s no lyrics, they think the song will lead them forward or they think about love or something like that – that’s the great thing about music, I think.”

There is something magical about the way THERE’S A LIGHT make music. Their soundscapes are so complex, musical mazes made up of dense rhythms and structures yet their approach is so simple and stripped-back. It’s what gives f̶o̶r̶ ̶w̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶m̶a̶y̶ ̶I ̶h̶o̶pe̶? for what must we hope? it’s natural evolution from 2018 debut A Long Lost Silence.

Colouring their plaintive post-rock with shades of prog-rock, shoegaze and doom, they take you on a journey. Not only do you seek hope in it’s lyrical moments, but in it’s textures. Repeat listens see you searching for sounds, letting them symbolise different emotions of hope. Was it part of the plan or simply a coincidence? “I don’t know if it was on purpose, it’s just an evolution, because everybody has gotten better at song writing, we’ve all gotten more experience as a band,” he admits. “We’re not saying we want to be a typical post-rock band, that’s never what we want to be. We always say that we just want to make the music we like and if it touches the heart of the audience, we made everything right.”

It’s an unwritten rule of post-rock for albums to be over an hour in length and listened to from start to finish. It’s one THERE’S A LIGHT duly adhere to like worshippers of a cult. As attention spans dwindle and streaming continues to take over the music industry, do they not feel their album could get lost? “In the music industry, is it a risk? Yeah, because if you go on to Spotify, you see every new record has only songs that are two minutes long, so of course in the music industry, this could be a risk,” he suggests seriously, before a smile cracks on his face. “But for us, it’s not a risk at all because we are happy to share the music and if people want to hear it and they’re listening to it, it makes us happy because we know they’re interested in our music and that’s all that matters.”

But surely as a band recording albums, going out on tours, and signing to a label as prestigious as Napalm Records, there’s a part of them that wants to grow their band beyond the underground? “It’s not about the money, it’s not about generating clicks, it’s about being in touch with the listeners and to touch their emotions. Maybe for people like CARDI B and NICKI MINAJ, it’s a risk if they had a song that’s five minutes long because a lot of people will skip them after a minute or something if nothing’s happening, but for us as a post rock band with instrumental songs, it’s not at all – it’s just passion.”

Passion deep down is what drives THERE’S A LIGHT. It’s where they find their own sense of hope, and through that they deliver an album that can guide us through our darkest and lightest times like our own personal lighthouse.

f̶o̶r̶ ̶w̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶m̶a̶y̶ ̶I ̶h̶o̶pe̶? for what must we hope? is out now via Napalm Records. 

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