Hello.

We are Hope Of The States, again. There are some differences between now and then. We are older than we were 18 years ago. Some of us have had kids. Some of us moved out of London. Some of us then moved back to London. Anthony didn’t want to rejoin the band because he’s doing other things. This is all fine. There is nothing dramatic about it. We are still friends. There are a lot of dramatic events in the world already. There isn’t any drama here.

We have been on Instagram posting about us reforming for a few months now. We apologize if it is boring or sounds like we are boasting and if it contributes to the large amount of social media posts you receive which you find irritating. So irritating in fact that you may feel like William Foster, the character played by Michael Douglas in the 1993 film ‘Falling Down’. The one where he gets very cross about things. We don’t want to make you feel like that, but we understand if we have made you feel like that. 

We wanted to say something about the first song we are releasing. It was written in spring of 2024 and it was written very easily. Some songs just come together very quickly and easily. From start to finish. Some songs like that, when they are finished, you listen to it and think it’s a really good song. We remember songs like that from when we wrote them before. This felt the same as those ones. We will always try to write songs like that.

We spoke to some friends (who we have thanked previously on Instagram) who gave us the confidence to record the song properly. So we went to a studio in Margate with Jolyon Thomas and recorded it properly. The amplifiers were in need of a bit of a service because they crackled quite a lot. Lots of our guitar leads were broken we discovered. Some of the headphones we used didn’t fit very well. The weather was very hot indeed. We drank a lot of Liquid Death canned water because they had a lot of it in the studio and it tasted a bit strange. We also drank cold beers and sometimes drank a bit too much wine and smoked too many cigarettes. It was too much because they can give you hangovers and cancer respectively. We recorded the song. The five members of the band and Jolyon Thomas. Jason was the studio assistant. James played some piano and some guitar (using a screwdriver). Craig took lots of photos and videos. Francesca played a cello which sounded really nice.

Then we finished recording the song and it sounded really good. Because it had the really exciting and sometimes magical feeling you can have when recording a song but it also had the hard work too. When your fingers hurt from playing, and it was very hot, so we sweated quite a lot. We are proud of the song and are grateful that we had the chance to record it. We think it’s a good song and should be as long as it is. We like long songs like this sometimes even though the music and many other creative industries seem to not like things like that. Because they use algorithms and things, like Amazon does. Some of the people who run places like Amazon and Spotify, don’t seem like very nice people we don’t think. 

I have been awake since 3.30am and a really big flock of birds flew over my house which looked really amazing. The song is called Long Waits In A & E and we really hope you like it.

Hope Of The States,  31st of October 2024

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