Music has always been a powerful tool, a voice for important issues, to provoke thoughts, spark dialogue, and make your opinion heard. The fact that musicians are remembering that and embracing its power and potential in recent times is obviously a good thing, but the fact that they feel the need to do so is a more worrying issue.
And Minneapolis music makers perhaps have more reason to head down such sonic paths, given the way its citizens have been treated in the last year, and not least at the hands of their own government. I repeat, their own government. The people they have voted into power. The officials chosen to represent them.
“Hope To Hell” is The Gated Community’s latest single and the title track of their latest EP, a set of three songs that try to put the city’s current mood and thoughts into song form. And, although it is an overwhelming task, they have created a beautiful and poignant message from their home city to the world.
It is an EP that proves the adage of less is more, and that sometimes the words and sentiment of a song have more than enough weight to drive it without resorting to fancy hooks and clever sonic layers. So the title track runs only on a gentle beat, sparse and ominous piano strokes, the sonic scream of a distant guitar, and a lyric that is both a heartfelt plea and a rallying cry.
“Still Hear” turns anger into defiance, again with a minimal soundscape that ebbs and flows between understatement and an anthemic lift, feeling like a fist-in-the-air, and “Nothing At All” is a bluesy groover that continues this triptych of proud and profound protest.
It is a great EP, not only for its subtle, scintillating music but also for its important message: unity and resistance in the face of the ICE storm currently trying, but failing, to break the spirit of the Twin Cities.
And I’ll leave the last words for frontman Sumanth Gopinath, “I am so moved and inspired by the bravery, intelligence, and steadfastness of my fellow Minnesotans in the Twin Cities who, against the odds, are acting tirelessly on behalf of our most vulnerable community members. This song is for them.”
We are all Minneapolis!
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