Hurry Catch a Breakthrough on Don’t Look Back

The Philadelphia power pop heroes return with their best album yet

By | August 11, 2023 | 10:30am

Reviews Hurry

Hurry Catch a Breakthrough on Don’t Look Back

“And we’re back at the beginning” goes the first line on Hurry’s fifth album, Don’t Look Back. It’s a comfortable sentiment for the band’s best album yet, one that covers the end of one relationship and the beginning of another with clear excitement and explosiveness. Hurry have always been well-schooled in jangle pop classics and ‘90s pop rock, and lead singer Matt Scottoline’s songcraft has been regularly sticky, but it often seemed like the quartet was searching for something bigger. On Don’t Look Back, Scottoline’s alternating infatuation and post-breakup melancholy feels like a breakthrough. For a band with steadily big hooks, it seems that all Scottoline and co. needed were some big feelings to back those choruses up.

The sonic palette of Hurry is a familiar one. Built upon the guitar tones of Gin Blossoms and the atmosphere of Teenage Fanclub, Scottoline’s songs exist in conversation with every band who’s ever tried to take the guitar pop of yesteryear and inject new emotions into them. There’s a little bit of the Byrds, a little Matthew Sweet and plenty of The Lemonheads to go around. Like every great power pop record before, there are guitar solos that duplicate a song’s vocal melody, vocal harmonies tinged with a chorus effect and ideally sludgy drumwork that leaves the hi-hat half-open. At certain points, it appears like the band is playing with a big dial labeled “power pop” and repeatedly turning it up. If you enjoyed their 2021 record Fake Ideas, you’ll find plenty of similar territory being tread here. But Don’t Look Back manages to sustain its vision for about 45 minutes, a minor miracle for a record with such familiar textures.

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Don’t Look Back succeeds at its finest when it puts you in Scottoline’s shoes, experiencing the tunnel vision of a decaying relationship (“You can’t help the ways I make you crazy”) and the endless string of questions that come with a break-up. Paired with his aching, evocatively nasal voice, Scottoline’s direct lyricism is often the highlight of Don’t Look Back. On “Parallel Haunting,” he sings “Can I ask if I’m still with you?,” right as a lower harmony comes and backs him up. It feels like watching an old friend experience a break-up in terms of sheer secondhand bummer. But even on the weakest songs, Scottoline’s muted observations, confusions and questions help carry the listener through. While “For Us to Find Love” never quite achieves liftoff, in part because of the muted lead guitar tone, the line “Can I stay the night so this is never over?” is memorable and soberly gloomy.

Scottoline’s strongest writing often comes when he’s being underhandedly funny, tossing in a metaphor or line of self-deprecation to allow for some levity in the record’s consistent mood. It works primarily on Don’t Look Back’s more upbeat tracks, where a punchline might appear out of nowhere. With a descending guitar lick that recalls The dB’s’ melodies by way of The Marked Men’s production, “No Patience” has Scottoline comparing himself to a “a dog who hears his owner coming back from town.” There’s also the supernatural metaphors on “Parallel Haunting,” which concludes with Scottoline yelping “I want to haunt you, too” in a way that’s both somber and silly.

Because Hurry are working within the constraints of power pop, it helps that the band is searching for ways to make each moment distinct. The LP subsists on plenty of fantastic small touches that lift the songs into greatness. Justin Fox’s lead guitar parts often come crashing through the strummed guitars, throwing fuzz into the mix whenever a song needs it to achieve an anthemic feeling. Opener “Didn’t Have to Try” features a lovely build up which coalesses into an ideal pairing of Scottoline’s harmonies and Fox’s wailing guitar solo. Whenever trumpets and trombones make an appearance, courtesy of Ben Grigg and Logan Bloom, respectively, it’s a welcome surprise, livening up the band’s comfortably signature sound. Those horns help make the ending of “Parallel Haunting” genuinely triumphant.

The straightforward heartbreak that Don’t Look Back captures is the core of the record. It’s peppered with a healthy collection of details that are so familiar to anyone who’s been through a breakup. Scottoline waits for phone calls to be returned, talks things over and stares at his ceiling “inside [his] shitty bedroom.” Even with that forward-thinking title and “The Punchline,” a closing ode to moving forward the best you can, many of these songs still do emotional somersaults. One of the record’s most despondent lines––”Am I the one you still call baby?”––emerges on the album’s lead single, “Beggin’ For You.”

There’s a great moment on “Something More” where Hurry finds momentary transcendence. The drums and guitars drop out for a beat, Scottoline’s voice becomes slightly more dejected as he sings “I’ve waited a long, long, long time.” Those singled out vocals genuinely feel like an emotional breakthrough, in part because of how winningly they’re performed. Don’t Look Back is centered around that waiting—for something old to end or for something new to start. While Hurry have clearly internalized that the waiting is the hardest part, the band is beyond gifted at turning that uneasiness into wonderful pop rock.

Ethan Beck is a writer from Pittsburgh who is currently living in Manhattan. His work can be found at Bandcamp, No Ripcord and others.