About

Hope Of The States are a British rock band who formed in Chichester in 2000. Outliers in an age of skinnyjeans’n’hair-straighteners garage-rock, they made music that swayed majestically from slow-building postrock maximalism to spiky, erudite anthems to sweeping orchestral ballads, sometimes all in the same song. Their live shows were immersive captivating spectacles of military drumming, flickering live projections, a triple guitar assault and a violin switching between rollicking jigs and weeping country laments.

The band’s debut single was the eight-minute atmospheric and explosive ‘Black Dollar Bills’ that was released independently in a hand-sewn and stamped hessian sleeve in 2002. It combined the best bits of Radiohead, Mogwai and Godspeed You! Black Emperor and had the music industry immediately standing to attention. The band signed to Sony and the debut album ‘The Lost Riots’ was released in June 2004, it earned rave reviews across the board. Giving the record 9/10, NME said, “Hope Of The States are changing what a band can do and be.” But by this point everything had changed, with the tragic death of guitarist and co-founder Jimmi Lawrence during recording sessions casting a long shadow over everything that followed.

They regrouped and in June 2006 released a second album, ‘Left’, that melded ‘The Lost Riots’ epic expanse with propulsive rock bangers and poignant singalongs. But, mentally exhausted and disillusioned, they split up just a few months after Left hit the shelves, closing the curtain on the band with a ragged and defiant final show at Reading Festival that summer.

Now reunited and re-energised, they released the twelve minute long multi-suite epic ‘Long Waits In A & E’ digitally in November 2024 and on vinyl at a run of four sold out shows in early December. The shows were a cathartic and triumphant return to the stage which saw the band sounding more powerful and vital than ever before.

Now in 2025 the band continue their return. Sony are reissuing a special edition vinyl repress of the classic debut album as part of Album Day 2025 on October 18th. This features special edition artwork as well as the addition of a number of the bands much loved B-sides. Some on vinyl for the first time.

Whilst clearly a furious distillation of the widescreen, blown-out Morricone-channelling art-rock of their early days, the song also sounds unlike anything they’ve done before. Starting somewhere like the main stage at Lollapalooza circa 1992, the track then morphs into the biggest riffs the band has ever recorded and finally ends up in a mournful but triumphal take on The Beatles in a desert somewhere…. Twenty years remove from their initial run has only deepened their visceral thrilling attack and the movements between sad lullabies to staggering crescendos have never hit harder.

There is unfinished business to tend to. Hope Of The States make music that hits you in the heart and the head. A rare band of genuine feeling making music for all the emotions. In a world seemingly determined to spin off its axis, this is a return to savour.