Everybody Swoons by The Hallelujah Ward
'Everybody Swoons' by The Hallelujah Ward
With the cathartic jubilance of “Your Uncertain Shadow”—the opening track on The Hallelujah Ward’s off-kilter full-length debut album, Everybody Swoons—this Milwaukee supergroup of sorts proves music can, indeed, provide comfort in the midst of grief. The track was inspired in part by the 2018 suicide of Scott Hutchison, vocalist and guitarist for Scottish indie rockers Frightened Rabbit, and it urges listeners to “make your bed and take your time/fill your lungs with hope and rhyme.”
Borrowing the best bits from R.E.M. and The Cure, as well as from band members’ own distinctly Midwestern pedigrees, The Hallelujah Ward is fronted by Milwaukee mainstay and in-demand guitarist Mark Waldoch, with drummer Dan Didier (The Promise Ring) and bassist Paul Hancock (Testa Rosa). The death theme ebbs and flows throughout Everybody Swoons, including the haunting “Nobody’s Ghost,” a tribute to the late Mimi Parker, drummer and vocalist for Minnesota minimalist rockers Low, who died from ovarian cancer in 2022. In fact, Waldoch has joked he almost called the album Death Swooned. This much is certain, though: The eight songs here are worth swooning over.
The Hallelujah Ward will play a record-release show at the Cactus Club on Friday, June 6.
