A marked improvement on previous single Caroline (still the Heaps Shittest song I’ve heard all year), Hoping For opens with a lush bed of guitars that sit in a tidy midpoint between jangle and shoegaze. The overwrought vocal style lacks the conviction of Children Collide or the fragility of The Vasco Era, but there is a rather brilliant, almost spoken-word, contemplative verse on offer midway through. It’s promising, but the track and its respective video purport an aesthetic that doesn’t sit quite right – resting on unchallenged dickhead machismo and barely-ironic retro-Australiana fetishism. I’m predicting the next Bad//Dreems video will be a NSFW one-shot of a round of soggy biscuit, but with a first edition vinyl of Teenage Snuff Film taking place of the biscuit.
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