Hotline TNT are putting the power back in power pop. We’re familiar with the niche the New York quartet has carved for itself within the shoegaze revival: lean, hooky songwriting beefed up by pedalboard scuzz. With each new release, though, the group’s fuzzy guitars and earworm choruses seem to get more muscular, and on its third LP, Raspberry Moon, there’s a newly realized arena-rock gleam that really lets each element shine. While it’s Hotline TNT’s most polished, accessible album to date, it also feels like the most substantive version of their work so far, repurposing their grit to massively catchy effect.
Raspberry Moon is the first album written by the whole band, and there’s a new confidence to the music; the album’s very first strum, on opener “Was I Wrong?,” catapults us full force into a wall of sinewy, undulating guitars, ground-shaking bass, and drums that just won’t quit. The song also features frontman Will Anderson’s clearest vocals to date and a blistering guitar solo that whisks us out of the dive bar and into the hot plastic of stadium seating. That’s not to say the beer’s been watered down—quite the opposite. If previously some of the band’s songwriting fell victim to the weighted-blanket crush of shoegaze reverb, Raspberry Moon casts off the haze just enough to properly showcase each band member’s talents—not to mention additional keys, percussion, and background vocals from producer Amos Pitsch, of Tenement, who’s credited as a fifth member. The more judicious application of shoegaze texture uses fuzz as an accent rather than an all-pervasive filter, letting each instrument come clearly into its own.
Not only are the dimensions bigger than ever, but the songwriting’s more varied. Never before have we heard something like the cutie-pie moonlight twinkle of “Dance the Night Away” from Hotline TNT, nor the campfire-ready na na nas in the chorus of “Julia’s War” (the title being a nice shoutout to They Are Gutting a Body of Water, peers in the shoegaze-revival vanguard), but these stylistic experiments sound more like natural expansions of their previous sound than pivots away from it. And though the lovelorn sentiment that dominated 2023’s Cartwheel persists, there are also more expressions of hope, adoration, and perseverance. Professions of love are written just as plainly as moments of defeat, but the strength of the band’s arrangements makes the lines feel all-encompassing. On “Candle,” the simple couplet “I wanna try/Get butterflies” hits particularly hard, propelled by the most heartbeat-quickening drumline on the entire album.
Lyrically, Hotline TNT continue to fire off their hallmark fragmented vignettes with it-is-what-it-is succinctness; “The Scene” paints a stark picture of relationship disillusionment in exactly 14 words. As pithy as the storytelling can be (“I’ll take a shirt and hope that it fits,” Anderson muses about packing for a hypothetical trip to heaven), the brevity can occasionally be a little awkward. Even on standout track “Break Right,” the line, “If you could suffer my bad night” feels unwieldy, especially since the vocals are clearer than ever before. But they never let up in their pursuit of sticky hooks, and awkward lyrics are easier to forgive when the songs are so damn catchy.
Raspberry Moon triumphs in its ability to synthesize so many different styles into something singular: bigger, bolder, more anthemic, and more assured. Taken out of context, a double-barreled shoegaze sleetstorm like “The Scene” and a fetching jangle-rock tune like “Dance the Night Away” seem to have no business sharing space on the same album. But what every song on Raspberry Moon has in common is unabashed earnestness: steadfast without being precious, unpretentious and unabashed. As closer “Where U Been?” winds down into blown-out feedback, it feels like the lights are coming up in the arena Hotline TNT created, one where a big, clear sound merits a big, clear reaction—be it whooping, hooting, head-nodding, or hollering—as long as it’s performed en masse.
