Loyle Carner - hopefully! Review
Loyle Carner embraces all the moments that move him; From becoming a father, to parsing out an aching childhood, hopefully! poses as a memoir of painful memories, and optimistic truths. Carner shifts “why me?” to “Thank God it was me”.
In hopefully!’s reprise, “it’s about time”, Loyle Carner exits his first verse with “like you couldn’t find beauty in the pain, if I had a second chance I'd do it all again” before he sings about the lessons of patience he will have learned and passed down to his son. There’s no moment quite as saturated with hopefully!’s devoutness to wearing pride in the presence of pain. Loyle Carner takes the time across 11 tracks to humanize suffering, and empower the lessons he’s learned only bred from the mistakes he’s made. hopefully! is Carner’s most vulnerable work to date, written from the focal point of a father who wants to rewrite the narrative for his children.
This project is lyrically driven, but Carner’s instrumentation carries our ears through all 37 minutes with trudging, melodic, and sentient production. hopefully!’s cover art, featuring a child’s scribbled artwork over a portrait of Carner and his son visually amplifies the project's adherence to Carner’s fatherhood, and how his children are merely extensions of himself. It seems that hopefully! maps out the do’s and don’t’s of life, a sort of letter for his children to later live by. It’s a beautifully vulnerable project that stretches its limbs outside of Carner’s hip-hop comfort, and into his mastery of raw vocals and tender sonics. hopefully! is bruised, and swelling with emotion, yet it reframes the heartache into pride, hope, and chance. Loyle Carner has created a project that embodies both nuances; Pain and beauty, learning and suffering.
From the faint echoings of a porch-borne wind chime in “feel at home” to the beautifully preserved voice crack in title track “hopefully”, Carner works effortlessly throughout the project to connect your ears to moments raw and honest. “We keep receipts to keep attachments” harbors a feeling that we know all too well; The strife we endure to keep the things close to us that are inevitably not meant for us. Track “feel at home” is an all-seeing eye to the ‘frog in your throat’ topics that Carner masterfully articulates with such delicate precision and gentle movement. Carner tells his stories unflinchingly, posing his problems as opportunities to grow. “purpose” admits grievance and mentions of an unhealed childhood over a distant, haunting choir and probing piano. One could say that Carner even ‘broke character’ with his loss of wording following the line “still drinking in the presence of the–”, a moment where you can feel his anguish bleeding out into your ears. It’s moments like these that make the record shine; When emotion takes lead over form, it’s quite impactful.
“in my mind” tackles the relentless pursuit of finding what’s already deep inside of you. The subject matter is dark, and places a poetic scrutiny over Carner. We’re left with “all I saw was me” as the track melts into a faint whisper. hopefully! Probes at the idea that our problems are not really the problem, we are, searching for solutions that not only take accountability, but find grace in the mourning of our choices and circumstances.
Carner beautifully displays the search for light amongst the overcast, especially in the uplifting track “all I need”. He openly embraces all the parts of his past that hurt most, beit lonely ruminations about childhood, or wounded love. But this song isn’t bred out of desperation, rather a willingness to unveil the catalysts of his growth. “Making your own mistakes is really the only way to know” falls in the same vein on track “time to go” where Carner humanizes his mistakes and understands life as a body of water to navigate, not a mountain to reach the top of. It’s refreshing to hear Carner come from a place of grief with such power, recognizing that hope and faith are really the only ways through.
“hopefully”’s outro includes an adlib from East-Londoner poet Benjamin Zephaniah remarking “so now, I use my pen to bring out my anger.” This feels so reflective of the essence of the album entirely; Carner is angry at life, pondering tragedies, and contemplating mistakes. Despite it all, he speaks with eloquence, integrity, and hopefulness. hopefully! displays courage in the rawest of forms; Admitting to grief and suffering, but finding a way to reconfigure the darkness to let the light in. Loyle Carner touches the places that still ache with pain, but isn’t that the most powerful act of all?