Sunday, March 13, 2011

That Hope - Eight Dollar Hat (1985, Karen)

That Hope were a rather crooked, post punk-nik quartet presumably hailing from Bloomington, IN, but it's hard to believe they were even from the same planet as John Cougar Mellencamp, let alone the same region of the country.   Eight Dollar Hat is hard a one to generalize, but throughout it's ten off-kilter cuts you are bound to detect trace elements of Pere Ubu, Gang of Four, Pil, and China Shop.  The album's more tuneful forays, like "Power of Speech," "Move By Me," and "John's Got the Goods," give it some genuinely strong staying power.  If you get the notion to, you can download a That Hope song that doesn't appear on this disk over at I Remember Dayton blog.

01. Life of Antics
02. Hoist It Up
03. Power of Speech
04. Move By Me
05. Eight Dollar Hat
06. Thinner With Time
07. Heart Against Elvis
08. John's Got the Goods
09. Synchronicity 3
10. Useless Advice

Hear
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2 comments:

  1. bozo skeletonMarch 16, 2011 at 6:44 PM

    Thanks for this. I was going to IU in Bloomington, IN back in the mid eighties and I don't ever remember hearing about this band...but you never know.

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  2. George LudwigJune 28, 2011 at 4:01 PM

    Hi, I'm George Ludwig, the bass player form That Hope. Once in a while I search for the name just to see what's up, that's how I found this blog.

    Anyway, we were actually from Bloomington, Illinois. It was often confused with Bloomington, Indiana.

    We also had a second album called Beating The Dumb Guy.

    FWIW, I still play music, but it's nothing like That Hope: http://www.georgeludwigmusic.com

    Best,

    George

    ReplyDelete