Two years on from the astonishing darkness of 2014’s 'Home, Like Noplace Is There', a record that stands as one of the most important and illustrious releases in recent years, The Hotelier find themselves right in the middle of something entirely strange and unforeseen; 'Goodness'.

“We couldn’t really get any darker,” singer, songwriter and sole lyricist Christian Holden explains as we exchange some lively early morning chat over the phone. He isn’t far wrong either. ‘Home..’ was a record that saw Holden drag himself face first through the awkward agony of three “very complicated, toxic and abusive years.”

An intensely honest record; refreshing and rare in its sincerity, it rightfully placed the band to the crux of everything great and exciting about the alternative music scene. It extended itself to seminal status across both the emo and indie rock genre’s respectively.

Last year saw the band follow up ‘Home..‘ with something entirely bold and unexpected. ‘Goodness’ took The Hotelier to an entirely new place. Songs were vibrant and less emotionally constrained, whilst still holding the same urgency and emotional passion that drove them before.

“I think we had captured the feeling and concept well enough for ‘Home..’ that we didn’t have to revisit it and do it again,” Holden offers on the transition to 2016’s ‘Goodness’. “It was time to think about what growth looks like from there, both as a band and in terms of what emotional growth from that sort of feeling looks like.”

As for realisation and growth, ‘Goodness’ wore both with gleaming, anthemic pride. A naturalistic, breezy concept tied together refined feelings of acceptance, maturity and empathy in ways not entirely different from how ‘Home..‘ dealt with its darker edges, but things felt warmer somehow. As if finally finding the light after years spent in a very dark place.

The ferocity and severity of the songs was still there, but something more overreaching was apparent. “Recording an album is always a crazy experience, and feels really wild,” Holden explains. “Most of the time when I’m making a record I have spent months obsessing over small details of certain things, then, when we get in the studio, I become this control freak who takes everything way too seriously and can’t feel the record as a whole happening. Then the dust settles and I can really start to look at it for what it is though.

“There’s always a lot to take in before you can feel like you know what’s going on,” Holden says of the complexity of emotion he felt during the writing of ‘Home’. It wasn’t until later in Holden’s musical journey that he found artists who were able to express big complex ideas with few words either. “I was really interested in how they were doing that. It made me want to find ways to be more concise about how I use my words and how I can create a certain feeling within the listener within the structures of a pop song.”

As for what ‘Goodness‘ is, it’s difficult to capture in words, but that could be the point. Everything down to the spoken word, the lunar cycle themes behind the lyrics, and the naturalistic artwork feel far more spread out and expansive in their reach, and this perhaps comes down to the growth, realisation and acceptance that Holden places so carefully into it.

“The things that pop songs do is they have this feeling of grand narrative. Everything is certain. But how do you mess with that? How do you tease the listener within that and make them feel weird – weird and good at the same time. Make them feel like they’re missing something and not tell them what that is immediately.”

The Hotelier were conscious to make a record that could stand alone, but still hold hands with ‘Home..’. Holden recalls a conversation with members of Foxing about what their records were respectively doing, and how this began to trigger thoughts about how to take certain aspects away to tease the emotions and feelings of the listener.

“I remember them saying basically how ‘Home..’ is all action all the time, it doesn’t really slow down. And that made sense, it’s not really supposed to. And then I thought about what that meant, what slowing down would look like, and how the songs we were writing didn’t really allow for any space.”

Underneath the magnitude of depth, darkness and the sheer volume of emotion Holden forces the listener to deal with on both records, it’s undeniable that the core of his music holds a spark of profound positivity.

There’s no other way the songs would have managed to be of such importance to the people they have affected. But how does Holden approach tracks such as ‘Your Deep Rest’ and ‘Dendron’ from ‘Home..‘ two years on from its release, are they difficult to go back to now?

“I’ve always felt those feelings in a positive way. I would never describe ‘Home..‘ as a negative record, I’d describe it as a dark record. It deals with feelings that are dark, generally sadder and less desirable, as opposed to negative which is not optimistic or not focussed on growth.”

To hear Holden talk about his music is to hear someone genuinely both humble and inspiring. Touching on ‘It Never Goes Out‘, the bands first record, he offers the album as “fiercely political, but very ham-fisted in the way it deals with that.”

Consistently involved in activism, and not afraid to speak out about issues of gender, abuse or inequality, his music possesses both an ardency and a fragility that has spoken to people in an extremely unique, direct way. “Now that I understand interpersonal dynamics and relationships and how they are super complex and not as simple as they generally need to be, I want to present that to people and make sure that they get it.”

As for taking ‘Goodness’ on tour with it being so fresh, Holden reflects that “I think ‘Goodness’ was a slow burner.” A tour with Joyce Manor saw the songs from ‘Goodness’ go down well, but there was still slight anxiety as to whether they were being taken to in the same way. This all changed when the band began to play their own shows towards the end of 2016 though.

“I hope that says something about the record and what we wanted to portray. I like to think there’s more complexity now, like there’s growth from what came before and it means a lot that people have been appreciative of what ‘Goodness’ is and what we wanted it to do.”

It’s perhaps too soon to think ahead to what comes next for Holden and The Hotelier, the impact of the last two records has been the kind of special thing that doesn’t come around too often and it’s important to hold onto that for as long as it will allow. For now though, the pure honesty and severity of Holden’s writing has allowed both him and his fans to find ‘Goodness’ in a world that seems in dire need of it.

The Hotelier are currently on tour in the UK, and you can see the remaining dates below.

JAN
25 LONDON The Dome
26 BRISTOL Thekla