Last year, Hope Of The States got back together after breaking up in 2006. Now, frontman Sam Herlihy is here with “The Entire Span Of Human Existence,” which is his debut song as Samuel J Herlihy.
“To me it’s a bunch of haunted specifics somehow floating in a haze of half truths and truly heavy actual events,” Herlihy explains of the track on Instagram. “It’s what I’d play if I could play at my own funeral. Which would be mad egotistical. And weird. And perhaps impossible if anyone believes in entropy etc…..”
He continued, “I did it at The Hex Library, aside from the piano which was recorded in my old primary school hall on the piano we used to sing a mean version of ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ to. A week later they bulldozed the school. With the piano in it. Which was a waste of a mildly out of tune piano.”
“The Entire Span Of Human Existence” has garages filled with smoke, a crematorium by a DIY superstore, fire escapes, petrol stations, cemeteries, and a lot of complicated emotions. Violin, cello, and drones create a sweeping atmosphere around Herlihy’s scenes. It comes from an unannounced album, whose songs were “written and recorded myself at home, in my old primary school hall, in an abandoned barn by an abandoned MOD radar station and on a boating lake, in a row boat, surrounded by flamingo shaped pedalos,” he says.
He also has his first solo show coming up, which will take place at the St Pancras Old Church in London on Dec. 11. Hear “The Entire Span Of Human Existence” below.
