Ella Hooper is back with more Americana tunes on her third solo LP, Overnight Success. You may already be familiar with its four singles: “Growing Up is Hard to Do”, “I Got Eyes (On You)”, “When the Shit Went Down”, and, most recently, “Cowboy Man.”
The opening track “Growing Up is Hard to Do” starts the album off strong, with a catchy riff, thigh-slapping rhythm, keys and a sax solo from Mika Kohlman that tips its hat to Clarence Clemons. The arrangement is a perfect accompaniment for Hooper’s voice as she holds notes and sings “hey hey” between lines. For a song so bright and happy sounding, it does address an existential truth: “Growing up is hard, but the alternative isn’t great…”
“I Got Eyes (On You)” sounds like it just tumbled out of an American country bar, hat in hand, with one hell of an arrangement featuring guitars, keys, and a zydeco squeeze box (played by Flora Smith of Small Town Romance). Hooper’s vocals rise above the guitar riff and driving drum beat to deliver a scathing moment to someone claiming a girl is “just a friend.” It’s a highly relatable description of realising you’re not the only one in someone’s life and seeing it all play out in front of your eyes while they try to convince you that you got it wrong. It’s a callback to Robyn’s “Dancing On My Own” with an Americana twist.
“Bad Word” leans into more difficulties and hardships but provides some reassurance with “If you need a hug, if you need some love, let mother nature rock you like a babe again.” It starts with a brief acoustic guitar line before the drums and bass kick in to give it a quick tempo before Hooper starts to sing the verse. An electric guitar joins for the first chorus and all stays the same until the instruments are stripped back in the bridge, and more percussion instruments and backing vocals are added in the final chorus.
The most recent single “Cowboy Man” has Hooper lamenting another highly relatable situation: her experiences with “Peter Pans” and wishing a cowboy was a “Cow-man.” This is the first ballad on the album, with its slower tempo, minimal use of drums, and some emotional-sounding backup vocals. The strings added to the arrangement mirror the tone in Hooper’s voice to help us feel her disappointment.
Another ballad follows with “Let it Fall” (written with Steve Poltz) that starts off with only an acoustic guitar, an electric guitar playing a slow riff, and Hooper’s vocals. The instrumentation is the focus of this track, with Hooper providing quiet reflections of “let it fall, let it fall, let it fall, let the wind and rain take me.”
“When the Shit Went Down”, another single, is a reflection on the weirdest of modern times, the period between 2020 and 2022. Hooper recounts her personal story of losing both of her parents to cancer within two weeks of each other with the lyrics “One punch landed right after the other, it was a never-ending fight, it was chaos of the highest order…” and “when the shit went down, it shook my family tree, when the shit went down, it came for the core of me..” The track doesn’t pretend to be reassuring. It’s a pure reflection of how difficult times change who you are, with the final line “I’ll never be the same.”
Difficult, personal experiences are also recounted in “2B or Not 2B (Light Grey)” and “Die Happy.”
Hooper reflects on her quick rise to fame as a teenager with the album closing title-track “Overnight Success” describing how it felt at the time and what she has learned since. Hooper’s voice is the main feature of the song’s instrumentation that has been completely stripped back to just one guitar.
Overnight Success takes us on a long ride through Hooper’s mind and heart, and offers plenty of insight into what she has been experiencing over the last few years. The light-hearted, more upbeat tracks provide welcome balance to the ballads, and the result is a deeply personal collection of work that details universal difficulties we can all relate to.
FOUR AND A HALF STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Overnight Success will be released on Friday, 2nd October and can be found on all major streaming platforms. Pre-save and pre-order it HERE.
Ella Hooper‘s Overnight Success tour starts on Thursday, 1 October. You can read our interview with Ella HERE.
Ella Hooper – Overnight Success tour
Tickets HERE
Thursday 1st October – The Eltham Hotel, Eltham
Friday 2nd October – Black Bear Lodge, Brisbane
Saturday 3rd October – Brunswick Ballroom, Melbourne
Sunday 4th October – Trinity Sessions, Adelaide
Thursday 8th October – Stag & Hunter, Newcastle
Friday 9th October – Petersham Bowlo, Sydney
Saturday 10th October – Smiths Alternate, Canberra
Header image credit: Jeremy Dylan
