Album Review: Bad Bad Hats Shows Love Is A “Lightning Round”
Fluttering tape loops, a few wrong notes, and lyrics that swerve off emotional roads to change immediate course. If Bad Bad Hats’ intention with Lightning Round was to leave listeners feeling as raw and sentimentally honest as Kerry Alexander’s voice then it succeeds. It is a 10 track dive into a heart.
Lightning Round does go by exactly like one. In just 40 minutes, the band explores the battle to feel independent and dependent in relationships with tracks such as, “Get What I Want”, “Automatic”, and “Makes Me Nervous”. On one hand, you want fee like a separate entity form your partner, but, on the other hand, you want to feel like a shared unit. Wanting their support while knowing you can support yourself is a tearing dynamic that Alexander’s voice shows with steady, composed vocality. As if she is investigating the confusion that comes from these desires to see how they clash, and if they really need to.
It helps that Lighting Round is so simple in melodies because it allows you to approach verses that seem too “deep” to approach publicly to feel natural. Honestly? No one goes to a public forum to say they love their boyfriend, but they are scared they are co-dependent? The last time I saw someone do that The Oprah Winfrey Show was still on. Yet, from “Girl” to “365”, that is what Alexander is doing amongst instrumentals that feel like the pen to her mind’s paper. Every rhythm draws on her sheeted notes to bring to life that it is okay to feel clashed in your desires.
There will never be a relationship that does not have a moment when your ideas duel in duality, but Bad Bad Hats’ Lightning Round might be the easiest album to feel that duality. It is quick, effortless, and succinct in its mission to approve love as a confusing, confounding virtue. It is for these reason notes will feel off, fuzzed, buzzed, and twisting in loops. A relationship is never fully clear, which is why it asks you to grow for clarity. For More Information On Bad Bad Hats And To Buy Lightning Round on August 3 Click Here.
