Huck Hastings‘s album ‘Cheers To Progress’ was released earlier this year to great acclaim – in my review I summed it up as being ‘a collection of beautiful personal observations on relationships and love, floating across shimmering instrumentation: intelligent and arch’. And as time passes, this view remains steadfast: it is truly a gracious and evocative album.
I highlighted the track ‘The Clincher’, calling it lush and mesmerising – Hastings’s vocals ringing like a bell, clear and emotive, filled with a painful yearning for consistency and stability in a relationship. Hasting inserts little lines and asides that illuminate a bittersweet sense of humour – I hope you’re happy, I hope you’re well and that your life is good, that both your boyfriends keep you satisfied in ways I never could.
Hastings says of the track:
‘The Clincher’ really is the linchpin of this album. It tells the whole story from a place of acceptance and retrospect. I wrote it upon realising that I could (and would) write about this period of my life forever unless I closed that door willingly. This song and video is me doing so
Hastings has now released a beautiful and enchanting video for the track which cinematically captures the fragility and beauty of relationships that form the basis of the song. Directors Tom Stephens (Tesse) and Matt Maule say of the short film:
We wanted to complement the beautiful simplicity of Huck’s songwriting with visuals that captured the feeling of a relationship that is unravelling to a point of destruction.
The lush scenery provides a dramatic and glorious pallete on which the raw and open portrayal of the vicissitudes of love between the protagonists is painted. You can feel the emotions, the joys and the pains of love portrayed with an evocative soundtrack:
This is indeed what the word cinematic was invented for, and Hastings’s song makes a perfect soundtrack.
You can get ‘Cheers to Progress’ here or download through the link below:
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