The last week of August, there was a curious email in the inbox of many Ha Ha Tonka fans who also use Spotify. All the email stated was that Ha Ha Tonka’s new album, Lessons, was now available to stream on Spotify. Which doesn’t sound too out of the ordinary: except for the fact that the album came an entire month early.
Ha Ha Tonka sent out a tweet that confirmed Spotify was at fault and made Lessons available prematurely.
This tweet was later deleted from Ha Ha Tonka’s Twitter account. Perhaps because of pressure from their recording company, Bloodshot Records, who may have thought that any attention the band gave to the mistake would only promote the availability of the album. It made no difference either way. Ha Ha Tonka fans had found out and were ecstatic from the surprise of an early release.
The album was finally removed from the Spotify library two days after it had been mistakenly posted. This gave me and many other fans plenty of time to listen to it multiple times and oh what an album they’ve made.
Ha Ha Tonka has a “go-big-or-go-home” attitude on Lessons. There is so much more production here than in their previous three albums. They even talked with ELLE about it. One specifically notices the excellent addition of strings right off the bat in “Dead to the World”. Some bands lose a sort of raw energy when they begin to layer on more and more instruments. This is not the case with Ha Ha Tonka. ”Dead to the World” kicks off the whole album with a huge sound and through all the production they were able to keep the same energy and sincerity from their previous projects. The album gets so huge sounding with so much energy, I often found myself getting goosebumps from these extraordinary songs. This energy and sincerity is what made me such big fans of theirs so I’m happy to see it present in Lessons as well. Also, the four-part harmonies which have become a staple of Ha Ha Tonka songs are still as strong as ever.
It seems like Lessons has a concept or main idea and it reminds me a little of their second album, Novel Sounds of the Nouveau South, which also seemed to be tied to a concept. Many of the songs on Lessons are connected, lyrically and musically. I got the feeling that the album is tied to lead man, Brian Roberts, and how he views his legacy or how badly he wants to make a difference during his time on earth. I got this impression beginning in the first track and how he’s “not dead to the world” right through to the last song where he says “I set out to prove the world wrong”.
Whether this is the theme meant for Lessons or not, I have a feeling that Ha Ha Tonka will be getting much more attention and be very alive in the world once Lessons is correctly released on September 24th.
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