The Hunches to release their "possibly final album" 'Exit Dreams'
Released 26th January on In The Red Records December 18, 2008, 01:06 PM Views: 1004
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by mark191082 [More from this Author]  “The Hunches, knocking loudly at the walls of the known. They blast extremely hard, post-core, thrash-noise chunklets into The Cramp's Platonic framework, add vocal weirdness, strange raunch-ballad action, and really knuckle the whole mess into a bloody pulp. They even cover the Electric Eels' Accident. And the result are one helluva beautiful wreck." Mojo
The Hunches (Ben Spencer, Hart Gledhill Sarah Epstein and Chris Gunnare) – are Portland’s finest purveyors of cacophonous garage that chews you up and spits you out with such devastating hidden melody you are left wondering how they crammed such pop into the noise cavalcades. Having released two previous full-lengths – ‘Yes. No. Shut It’ (2002, ITR) and ‘Hobo Sunrise’ (2004, ITR), the band are back with ‘Exit Dreams’ their third album (and possibly final album!) that captures The Hunches’ fiery live form on wax once more
It’s a veritable melee of vicious guitar savagery and lo-fi freak-out fugginess. It’s the perfect follow-up to ‘Hobo Sunrise’ – a ragged-of-edge riot of a rock ‘n’ roll album that taps into the past to produce a blurry-eyed and stinging-eared present of bloody mouths and shot-to-shit synapses sizzling with amplified excess.
Not that ‘Exit Dreams’ is non-stop fury, a one-dimensional thrill. There’s much more to The Hunches than simple shock-and-more bombast. Across the course of twelve tracks, the outfit navigate styles known to explorers of under-the-radar rock from the pages of history, each time twisting the tried into forms best-fitting their singular focus. Lose-yourself intensity is stripped back to the bare bones of a perfect pop skeleton; crunched guitar chords shift their weight to turn sweet from beginnings most acerbic. Throughout, vocalist Gledhill plays preacher, teacher, lover, fighter – outpourings from a soul scorched painting over the lines of arrangements that rise to collapse upon themselves, that tumble only to return from the depths like a beastly behemoth royally pissed.
This is Iggy Pop hijacking The Icarus Line and juicing adrenaline into their eyeballs; it’s the give-a-fuck Velvets getting loose and pissing off the neighbours while The Wipers chuck stones at their windows; it’s every great garage-rock record you’ve never heard in a single 41-minute sitting. It’s the top-up for the tinnitus that only just wore off some four years after the last time The Hunches rode through this town.
The idea that it’s better to burn out than fade away is a stupid one. Much better to set fire to everything around you and dance inside the encircling flames, facing your fate with a wicked grin. The Hunches might be departing us, but the four-piece are leaving with a bang sure to raze these walls to the ground.
Dance the dance of the destined to burn, and every second feels more vital than the last.
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