Hospitality – Trouble (2014)

Hospitality’s self-titled debut album was a love letter to life in your early twenties – a carefree, cartwheeling attempt to see the good in bad decisions, and only the sweet in bittersweet romance. A few years on, their second LP Trouble doesn’t just feel like an expansion of these themes, but a direct sequel: resigned to the realities of late twenties disappointments, and finding lyrical escapism in empty, imaginary landscapes.
Gone are the colourful bursts of brass flooding the choruses. Gone also are the peppy drum beats elevating acoustica into carnival.


 Instead, songs like ‘Going Out’ swing their hips on a slow, sultry groove; call and response casually falling down the fretboard, with acres of room around the instruments. Even the most obviously hook-laden number on offer here (‘It’s Not Serious’) is delivered underarm. It’s a melody which could so easily be aimed squarely for the Soundcloud streams – but instead Hospitality show restraint in stripping it back to a wispy, dreamy shuffle; all the stronger for its understatement, and the space shot through the mix like beams of cold light.