Text : Fabien Trève
Translation : Florian Baudouin

For the release of Tired Lion’s new album, Breakfast for Pathetics, CHAOS Music Magazine suggests you to discuss it a bit. But before then, here are a few lines about the project.

Sophie Hopes and her project Tired Lion show up in 2016 with the EP Figurine. The tracks ‘Not My Friends’ and ‘I Don’t Think You Like Me’ particularly appeal to the audience (even if to us, this EP’s best one remains the self-titled track, sorry not sorry).This EP was enough to display the australian artist’s huge energy to the audience. During the same year a single was released, ‘Agoraphobia’, that seems to foresee a light evolution.

In 2017, the band’s debut album was released. This change previously evoked was completely confirmed at the album’s release. A sound more refined, more maturity but the same energy. ‘Fresh’, ‘Cinderella Dracula’ and ‘Dumb Days’ seem to be the most enjoyed tracks on this debut, on a totally justified way, though. Similarly to “the post-EP”, one year after the album, is released the extremely catchy, efficient single With or Without.

This year in 2020, Tired Lion successively introduced three new tracks to us, Waterbed, Lie To Me and Cya Later, all of them accompanied with music videos. And that is this Friday November 20th that Breakfast For Pathetics, the project’s second album, was released.

This album marks a rebirth in Hopes’ and her project’s life. Indeed, leaving her hometown, Perth, going all the way through Australia and settling up in Brisbane, automatically had an impact on the project, notably on the band’s members, who unfortunately had to split up. That is what Breakfast for Pathetics means, being surrounded by your loved ones, then change comes…

That is thus a new address for the artist as well as for her music. Hopes has obviously gained self-confidence and managed refining her sound identity, switching between power and calm, sometimes mixing up pop and grunge sounds. Speaking about sounds, the album puts the emphasis on Hopes’ influences on some tracks, notably Cya Later, that could remind of 1979 by Smashing Pumpkins. Settling in Brisbane allowed Hopes to get closer from her boyfriend Luke Boerdam (Violent Soho), who has besides produced this new album, and that is felt! Boerdam could already work on the band’s previous album and give it the energy it deserved. His collaboration was equally important for this new album.

Among the tracks that we enjoyed are: Waterbed and Cya Later (two of the three singles released prior to the album), but we also have particularly liked the eponymous track (Breakfast for Pathetics). This one and Cya Later, very efficient, are perfectly adapted to be on repeat mode and to be honest, we can be tempted with pleasure.

If we had to objectively compare this album to the previous one, we wouldn’t necessarily notice a big evolution except a greater poise and a further work about the tracks, the recipe however remains efficient. That being said, the album’s last track, Screw You Man, seems to counter us by standing out from the rest of the album. Indeed, Hopes gives us as a last track, just as the previous album, a track far calmer than the previous ones, being different in that this time it is unplugged, a first for Tired Lion.

This album will certainly manage making a name for itself during the next times and totally matches with the local scene’s dynamic, notably as a nearly-one-woman band. It is important to highlight the power of the current Australian alternative/rock scene and to display the huge number of women featuring its bands and projects. Tired Lion could for a few years find its place among this scene, notably thanks to its consistency, and this new album isn’t likely to make things change.

Dew Process / Universal Music Australia