Yeah, I’m late on this one. And I’m thinking of a few people who are going to kick me for this, but I just finally got around to checking out Switchfoot’s latest album, Hello Hurricane. Switchfoot was one of my favorite bands back in the first half of this decade, and after A Beautiful Letdown, I thought they’d remain that way for a long time. That album is still one of my first “go-tos” for a variety of situations and emotions, and the raw emotion on that album is just amazing – nearly every track on it holds a special place in my heart, and can be sung on cue from memory. There’s not a single track on the album that I don’t love.
Their next album, Nothing is Sound, was pretty good, but I thought a noticeable step down from A Beautiful Letdown. When Oh! Gravity came out, they’d drifted further from where I’d hoped, going with a less polished, more experimental feeling to the album that I really didn’t think was that great. As a result, “new Switchfoot album” wasn’t really something I was thinking about when November rolled around, and it wasn’t until I kept hearing about how good it was from everyone that I decided to hit Amazon MP3 and see if it lived up to the hype.
Let me just start by spoiling my conclusion a bit and note that the album is now repeating for the third time and I still have an idiot grin on my face.