Scott Hardware's third full-length, Ballad of a Tryhard, is the Toronto artist's most sprawling, beautiful album yet. On 2016's Mutate Repeat Infinity, he relied on techno-sourced repetition and as little instrumentation as necessary to liven up a dance floor. 2020's Engel found Hardware combining decaying electronics and baroque pop. In these ways, both albums drew listeners into an intimate space, like a club or cavernous performance hall. Ballad takes Hardware's craft to new heights of sophistication and richness, establishing him as a master of melody, an exquisite popsmith, and a brilliant compositional mind.
Ballad is a Polaroid collection of a sojourn to the coastal city of Elche, Spain, where Hardware spent weeks wandering historic streets and playing piano until sunup. Each of the album's 10 songs is a suite in and of itself, built around acoustic and stringed instrumentation which grants them a tangibility less present in the synthetic pulsations of Mutate Repeat Infinity, and even the avant-pop of Engel. "Summer" and "Is Something Wrong Tonight?" burst forward and upward in full symphonic glory and splendour. Bass notes lilt like plants in the heat on "Another Day Ending"; coupled with vaporous keys, the song is as sultry as a Mediterranean evening, the very ambience in which Hardware steeped himself.
Musically, Ballad paints an ambrosial picture of a European tryst, like scenes of Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy at their most smitten in Richard Linklater's Before trilogy. But Hardware's lyrics dispel any romantic fantasies. Time slows down, allowing him to attain some respite — "I won't say a thing / No, the quiet's more powerful / And you can get lost at the top of your mountain," he sings on the cloudbusting, harpsichord-powered "Dentera" — but it's not enough. On the slippery "Watersnake," a ghost from his past interrupts his flickers of serenity. Along with his personal relationships, he's unable to find sustained peace knowing that the world at large — the Earth and the human species that inhabits it — is on the brink of disaster. He struggles to not let these circumstances or unwelcome presences knock him off the summit of peace he's scaled.
A sense of fatalism pervades Ballad. It's even embedded in a shrugging song title like "Another Day Ending." But Hardware isn't passive. He's determined to ride life to its fullest despite the circumstances. "September you don't scare me / I'm in no hurry / Let sand sift through my hands / Do I look worried?" he challenges on the uneasy "Metaterranean." He also displays determination — and resilience — when he sings, "Come on, light / Kiss my eyes / Call my name / In the crowd / I can wait / 'Cause I've waited / I can climb and crawl to find my way tonight" on "Another Day Ending."
Hardware also finds a sense of connection on Ballad absent in his previous albums, both of which expressed feelings of isolation and alienation. On "Love Through the Trees," he sings, "If I'm with you, I feel my edges soften / We both know that don't come around that often." And if not with people, he at least finds oneness with the world around him. "I'm alone / I don't mind it / And no work / Just the quiet / I take a breath, and I see / The room is taking breaths with me," he observes on "Another Day Ending."
Fraught with inner turmoil but contrasted by soaring, uplifting music and rare moments of contentedness, Scott Hardware spends Ballad of a Tryhard trying to relish in tranquility while bracing himself as the world crumbles around him. When it comes to developing as a songwriter, though, Ballad is one more stepping stone to achieving an artistry that's as indefinable as it is unpredictable.
(Telephone Explosion)Ballad is a Polaroid collection of a sojourn to the coastal city of Elche, Spain, where Hardware spent weeks wandering historic streets and playing piano until sunup. Each of the album's 10 songs is a suite in and of itself, built around acoustic and stringed instrumentation which grants them a tangibility less present in the synthetic pulsations of Mutate Repeat Infinity, and even the avant-pop of Engel. "Summer" and "Is Something Wrong Tonight?" burst forward and upward in full symphonic glory and splendour. Bass notes lilt like plants in the heat on "Another Day Ending"; coupled with vaporous keys, the song is as sultry as a Mediterranean evening, the very ambience in which Hardware steeped himself.
Musically, Ballad paints an ambrosial picture of a European tryst, like scenes of Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy at their most smitten in Richard Linklater's Before trilogy. But Hardware's lyrics dispel any romantic fantasies. Time slows down, allowing him to attain some respite — "I won't say a thing / No, the quiet's more powerful / And you can get lost at the top of your mountain," he sings on the cloudbusting, harpsichord-powered "Dentera" — but it's not enough. On the slippery "Watersnake," a ghost from his past interrupts his flickers of serenity. Along with his personal relationships, he's unable to find sustained peace knowing that the world at large — the Earth and the human species that inhabits it — is on the brink of disaster. He struggles to not let these circumstances or unwelcome presences knock him off the summit of peace he's scaled.
A sense of fatalism pervades Ballad. It's even embedded in a shrugging song title like "Another Day Ending." But Hardware isn't passive. He's determined to ride life to its fullest despite the circumstances. "September you don't scare me / I'm in no hurry / Let sand sift through my hands / Do I look worried?" he challenges on the uneasy "Metaterranean." He also displays determination — and resilience — when he sings, "Come on, light / Kiss my eyes / Call my name / In the crowd / I can wait / 'Cause I've waited / I can climb and crawl to find my way tonight" on "Another Day Ending."
Hardware also finds a sense of connection on Ballad absent in his previous albums, both of which expressed feelings of isolation and alienation. On "Love Through the Trees," he sings, "If I'm with you, I feel my edges soften / We both know that don't come around that often." And if not with people, he at least finds oneness with the world around him. "I'm alone / I don't mind it / And no work / Just the quiet / I take a breath, and I see / The room is taking breaths with me," he observes on "Another Day Ending."
Fraught with inner turmoil but contrasted by soaring, uplifting music and rare moments of contentedness, Scott Hardware spends Ballad of a Tryhard trying to relish in tranquility while bracing himself as the world crumbles around him. When it comes to developing as a songwriter, though, Ballad is one more stepping stone to achieving an artistry that's as indefinable as it is unpredictable.