Nineteen years since their formation in Nashville, HAMMOCK has emerged as a leading light in instrumental music, with a unique sound that melds elements of ambient, electronic, orchestral, and shoegaze. "Love in the Void" is HAMMOCK’s loudest album to date, embracing daring and vulnerability with palpable vitality at its core. Wide-eyed and looking forward, "Love in the Void" moves into an unknown future without fear. The album here has 13 songs.

The title track features smooth and calm melodies that we have come to expect from the band, but the guitar work is indeed more prominent. It comes to a heavy crescendo, and then fades away, like many winning things in life. “Untruth” has a more jovial and playful feeling as well as some vocals. I get a light and airy feeling when listening to this song, almost like a care-free summer day you spend exploring and taking a short nap under the shade of a tree. “It’s OK to Be Afraid of the Universe” speaks to your soul. The melodies are very well formed, and as is typical with HAMMOCK, you don’t have to search for them. They are right in front of you, begging for your touch.

“Release” is very emotional. Consider what that word means, and the feeling you get when you can unburden yourself. This is a cleansing song from the tip of your head and out the ends of your toes. The tension builds in your spine, but there is no greater feeling when it leaves. “It’s in This Lie” has soft, delicate vocals to go along with the melancholy sound. Although the drums are aesthetically reticent, they seem to fill the air with a pounding resonance. “I Would Stare Into the Sun with Your Forever” is a kind of love song, in keeping with the theme of the album. The simple bass line and guitar parts impart a crushing weight on the listener, evoking feelings of love so deeply your heart aches.

“Undoing” is an uncharacteristic HAMMOCK song, but I love it. The programmed drums are obvious and the sound is unabashedly accessible, with a jovial, easy melody and vocals. “Absorbed in Light” is a feel good song that just flows through you like a warm breeze on a cool spring day. Take it in, let it flow, and it will make you feel better. “The End is the Beginning” closes the album, and it covers the cyclical work of the band so well. Each ending in life can also be enjoyed as a beginning, and the optimistic music reminds the listener to hold onto the good they see, acknowledging the bad, but not letting it color your lens. As Andy Dufresne says, “hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

This album is all about texture, and substance, and the fact that they say so much with so little sonority. The atmosphere shifts from warm colors of yellow and orange to colder ones of blue and purple. Perhaps the best thing that I can say about their work is that no singular feeling can come from the album, meaning that to each listener, the album will mean something personal. For me, it’s about that gratifying and rewarding experience of finding love or being in love. But anyone who is knows that it comes with its share of work…that is the burden of love. It’s a beautiful and heartbreaking thing at the same time, and no one works better with these life paradoxes than HAMMOCK.