Album Review: Little Hurt – “Lovely Hours”

Naysayers who believe power pop isn’t capable of communicating serious musical art will have their dubious theorizing put to the test by Little Hurt’s Lovely Hours. Make no mistake, however; songwriter Colin Dieden isn’t writing high-flown flowery poetry. The lyrics for Lovely Hours’ ten cuts are gritty, sometimes profane, ribald, and spit caustic bile that would turn lesser souls into ash. His style has a loose, ugly eloquence that’s impossible to ignore. It seamlessly entwines around alt-pop arrangements driven by a tandem of assertive percussion and varied guitar textures.

“Lovely Hours” is the perfect opening track. Dieden pulls off everything you’d want from the album’s first song in a condensed timeframe. There’s no wasted motion or needless notes. His plaintive voice takes the listener’s attention in its grasp and draws you in. Emotions teetering on hysteria and dismissive vindictiveness make interesting bedfellows during the second track “Get Out of My Life”. The pacing throws caution to the wind and rides listeners with its uninhibited energy, surging at the right moments, and bringing listeners to their knees thanks to its surprising power. Dieden can rock out when he wants to.

There’s a lot of explosive pop included on this album. These strands of Dieden’s musical DNA arguably reach their zenith with “I Can Do Better Than You”. Lovely Hours’ first single is a figurative slap to the face of everything he felt for an ex-girlfriend and drips with spite at key points in the lyrics. He’s purging himself of the relationship during the song and its video alike. The video for the song explodes with color, and Dieden and the band lose themselves in the performance – letting the songs defiant energy carry them through the song’s underlying emotions.  “I Can Do Better Than You” can already be heard on SiriusXM Alt.Nation and we predict it will be blaring from radios far and wide this summer.

His sing-song vocals for “Laughing at Myself” propel the song through its stroll-and-bop tempo that are song’s greatest strength. Dieden has an enormous skill for constructing catchy vocal lines and scales new heights with his singing for this track. It’s one of Lovely Hours’ best lyrics too. He hits upon the album’s deepest groove with the track “Pineapple Pizza” and it’s also a candidate for one of the finest lyrics he’s written for this album. Dieden knows what he’s got too and gives listeners one hell of a vocal to support the song.

Lexi Johnson