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If one thing is for certain these days, it’s that the Canadian underground is a little overrated by the indie press. There’s constant talk of hot talent coming from the great white north’s deeper channels, but rarely does a singer/songwriter like Bobby Dove actually make it into the spotlight and win the favor of critics they deserve. Dove is a diamond in the rough; an up and coming singer/songwriter with wisdom well beyond their years, and in the new record Hopeless Romantic and its star single of the same name, they aren’t about to hide their gifts from the world any longer.
It definitely makes sense to me why Dove chose the title track as the lead single and music video to set the tone for Hopeless Romantic; in some ways, it wraps the entire album’s mood into a short, radio-ready performance that both relates itself to mainstream concepts while totally separating its vocalist from the scores of talented indie voices trying to make it big in 2021. The melodies are a catalyst for catharsis more than the lyrics are in this track, alluding to a contrasting persona that will become so much the theme of this LP that I would say Dove’s sophomore album is very much a record about introspection and moral duality.
The multi-interpretive premise of songs like “Sometimes It’s a Lonely Road,” “Chance in Hell,” “My World’s Getting Smaller” and “Like It or Not I Love You” might appear to be a stab at pop accessibility in black and white, but in practice it makes this material sound even more personal than it already would have. The protagonist in the tales told to us in these tracks is one who never tries to make themselves human, but instead is humanized by the poetic settings we find them in. It’s abrasive in one breath (“Gas Station Blues”) and heartbreakingly innocent in the next (“New Endings New Beginnings”).
Led by a beautiful voice that really made my heart melt the first time I heard the likes of “El Hormiguero” and “Haunted Hotel” for the first time, Hopeless Romantic is a record that sees Bobby Dove cashing-in on some of the harder-fought momentum I’ve seen a player in their scene acquire recently. Emotions are unconcealed in this tour de force, and despite the fiercely independent stylization of this material, I think all eleven of the songs included in this LP could be singles if Dove sees fit to release them as such.
by Bethany Page
