[Cover photo credit to Heather Doyle]
Modern Hope, from Dennis Ellsworth, will be arriving on September 29th, 2023, and ahead of that, he has released another single “Pressure” featuring slide guitar. The track asks for compassion and love to help offset the immense pressures the world can create.
Dennis Ellsworth says of the song:
Sometimes the outside pressures can hit you hard. The small stuff can trick you. If you can remember that you have love and you give love, then you can start to peel away the stuff that obscures you and leaves you pressurized. This song is about looking to love to relieve you of some of this pressure. It’s about asking for help. It’s about showing love and compassion to others and hoping you receive it from others.
On Modern Hope, Ellsworth addresses the challenges we’ve faced as a society in recent years, while also reflecting his own changes that have come from welcoming a new baby into his family in 2022.
In order to handle such personal material, he turned to an old friend on the other side of the country, Leeroy Stagger, to serve as Producer. Together with musicians including multi-instrumentalist Scott Smith, drummer Geoff Hicks and bassist Jeremy Holmes, they set up at Vancouver’s Afterlife Studios (formerly Mushroom Studios) in April 2022 where they recorded the entire album live off the floor in only four days.
Modern Hope has been created as an album, most effective when listened to in a single sitting.
Dennis Ellsworth says:
Sometimes a collection of songs just comes out feeling one way and they all work together Most of the time, whatever I am doing is decided somewhere between the conscious and subconscious. I don’t want to assume some other identity… Whatever I do, I want it to come from my natural voice.
