Posted on: April 14, 2022 Posted by: Kim Muncie Comments: 0

Deconstructed rock is all the rage at the moment, and no matter what you call this emerging style, it feels so much more stripped-down than anything to have come out of alternative music since the late 1980s. Foundry Town Survivors play a pretty interesting blend of Americana, psychedelia, and indie rock in their new single “Hopes and Dreams,” the first song I’ve heard from the group since their inception, and while it’s more indulgent than some of the straight-up minimalism in alternative rock today, it’s certainly on the more efficient side of what the mainstream has been accepting as revolutionary in recent years. 

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The instrumentation and lead vocal are intertwined in this track, and although that puts the lyrics dead between a pressure-filled bassline and a leering guitar part, there isn’t a second of the song that sounds overly tense. Truth be told, this feels like a demo for what would be a killer live performance, and likely one driven more by concept than a commitment to lyrical themes. The melodies are the muscularity of the verses incarnate, and it’s easy to see where we could have heard an instrumental “Hopes and Dreams” and drawn the same narrative from its hook. 

Americana and surrealism have always been a match made in heaven, and it certainly fits the unique profile Foundry Town Survivors are constructing for themselves like a glove in “Hopes and Dreams.” The cut and dry nature of the composing style is as endearing as the loyalty to melodicism over virtuosity in this single, and if nothing else I think there’s a standard being set here that a lot of this band’s closest competitors could learn something from, if not adopt outright. Filler has no place in contemporary alternative music, and this is a single that does a good job of reminding us as much. 

Kim Muncie

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