Hope You Fail Better opens, like
Horror Vacui, with a text set to song by
June Panic. Here you have "Dirge Without Music," a meditative poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, which contains the line "So it is/So it will be/For so it has been/Time out of mind." The now gratuitous
Dylan allusion is thus got out early, and best so, as
Hope You Fail is an album celebrating the complexity of living life in a newfound Christian consciousness. The awakening, charted on
Baby's Breadth, thus opens with a poem that challenges the death of the meek and artistic, just
June's ilk, and addresses the spiritual void that
Panic feels most move through like zombies. On "Let My Lungs Coin Words" he offers the elliptical "Only a creature who things and speaks in symbols can let symbols rule all creation and therefore lives only symbolically," offering this theme of sleepwalking to death without enjoyment, one that occupies the album. The shuffle-step alt-country of
June Panic's most recent albums is augmented and changed by producer Daniel Smith (of the Danielson Famile), who, sharing
Panic's nasal vocal delivery and penchant for preaching, adds frightening choruses to tracks like "Expensive Attic" and pushes stereo grandeur into the charming "Leaving Me My Eyes." Tranquility is fleeting in
Panic's world, however; "Getting Over Joy" opens with a blissful slide guitar and acoustic accompaniment, only to grow in epic proportions to a howling chorus backed by organ. When the din dies down, only the organ remains, a solemn tone that proves
Panic is just as interested in tailoring these days as being saved. It's a refreshing change. ~ Daphne Carr