Lonely The Brave hit unexpected new heights on The Hope List

New singer Jack Bennett signals the sky’s the limit for Lonely The Brave on The Hope List

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Lonely The Brave: The Hope List
(Image: © Easy Life)

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Conventional wisdom insists that Lonely The Brave’s 15 minutes of fame are up. After a promising debut (2014’s The Day’s War), the band started to stutter with a less good second record, and live shows that were somehow both hit and miss. 

Then singer David Jakes left. To say their career trajectory has been uneven would be to understate it a bit.

Unshaken, the band went back to their day jobs, found a new vocalist in the enigmatic Jack Bennett, and began again. 

It’s said that adversity instructs art. LTB’s woes have been rewarded with something remarkable: their best record yet. 

Buoyed on the metaphorical bloody nose that is 2020, it’s filled with a yearning (Something I Said, The Hope List) that recalls the sense of want in early Pearl Jam records, but rails and rallies (Keeper, Bright Eyes) like peak Foo Fighters or Biffy Clyro, suffused with soul.

Philip Wilding
Philip Wilding

Philip Wilding is a novelist, journalist, scriptwriter, biographer and radio producer. As a young journalist he criss-crossed most of the United States with bands like Motley Crue, Kiss and Poison (think the Almost Famous movie but with more hairspray). More latterly, he’s sat down to chat with bands like the slightly more erudite Manic Street Preachers, Afghan Whigs, Rush and Marillion.