Songs about Peace

March 4th, 2010 | By Joe Hiller | Section: Arts

Hope for Agoldensummer is a profoundly understated, content focused group from Athens, Georgia. Their music is a bluegrass-tinged wellspring of harmony and intimate lyricism. Resonator Magazine, in an article profiling the band, wrote on the grounding humanity of their sound: “The thing with the soulful vocals, the soft finger-plucked instrumentation—it’s all so damn tangible, so damn human, so present. So much of the redemptive quality of all of Hope for Agoldensummer’s music comes from that ever-present (even in darkness) humanity.”
Lyrically, too, this focus on the human finds continuing expression throughout their work, most explicitly in “Luke’s Song”, in which the band intones, gospel-like, “Love you my brother / Yes I do! / I love you my brother / Yes I do! / I will not forsake you / No I won’t / Your sister will not fail you / No she won’t!” Hope for Agoldensummer’s songwriting is united by themes of community, family, love and the shared struggle for justice—themes that hover in poetic allusion or hum beneath the currents of melody, ever present yet rarely gaudy or forced. They are a band of peace, brought to Grinnell as a part of the Peace Studies Conference, though the connections, however foundational, may take a few listens to make themselves apparent.