Since its earliest iteration seven years ago, Hotline TNT has been, for all intents and purposes, Will Anderson’s solo project. For his 2023 breakout album Cartwheel, the shoegaze-inclined musician hit the studio with little more than the record’s producer, assembling its great 12 songs almost exclusively by himself. It was a big level up from Anderson’s first Hotline TNT record, 2021’s decidedly lo-fi Nineteen In Love, though his fiercely DIY ethos still gave way to Cartwheel’s cozy, delightfully imperfect fuzz. For maybe the first time, Cartwheel made Hotline TNT a buzz band beyond their New York City home base, sending them out on the road with peers and buzz-band predecessors Wednesday and earning their first proper festival gigs. Live, the songs on Cartwheel soared — that studio distortion became blissfully overwhelming, the melodies atop it sounding somehow even more triumphant. A full band, at least relative to just one dude, can have that effect.
When it came time for Anderson to make Cartwheel’s follow-up Raspberry Moon, out this Friday, he once again had no intention of bringing anyone else along. It was to be just him at producer Amos Pitsch’s home studio in Anderson’s native rural Wisconsin. The musicians Anderson had spent almost the past year busily touring with had other ideas; guitarist Lucky Hunter, bassist Haylen Trammel, and drummer Mike Ralston weren’t ready to leave their touring stint with Hotline TNT behind, so they just went ahead and came to the studio too. Much to Anderson’s chagrin, as the group began working through one of the self-made demos he brought in, he simply couldn’t figure out how to get the band to achieve the exact sound he had in mind. According to the liner notes accompanying Raspberry Moon, Anderson then went upstairs above the studio, defeated. He returned a few hours later with a song that seemingly unlocked everything for which he’d hoped.
“If you really loved me/ You’d make a scene,” Anderson professes on “The Scene,” that song that got the ball rolling at the Raspberry Moon sessions. On first pass through the record, it’s not surprising that “The Scene” is the track that sparked this communal cohesion: It’s brief and potent, with beefy guitar chords and a sweet, jangly keyboard interlude, the type of instrumentation that inherently seems to call for attention. On it, Anderson wants the apple of his eye to make a whole scene over how much they like him back, but “The Scene” is more than a song about wanting one specific person to see you. On repeated listens it becomes a song about finally feeling comfortable just being seen. While Anderson was writing that song, however, his permanent bandmates-to-be chipped away at what would become “Break Right,” a subtly gorgeous krautrock-esque jammer: “The organ rides/ Moonlight/ The guitar hides,” Anderson murmurs in the lyrics he added afterwards, his guitar no longer a self-effacing shield but a fraction of a whole greater than himself.
As of the release week of Raspberry Moon, Hotline TNT is no longer Anderson’s solo project, with Hunter, Trammel, and Ralston now officially in the fold. The evolution into a full band seems like a particularly notable leap for the historically somewhat reserved Anderson, who famously withheld Nineteen In Love from streaming services and who on Cartwheel declared, “I pretend it’s all my fault,” as if he took everything into his own hands just to dodge the disappointment that could ensue from relying on others. On the power-noise-pop treat that is Raspberry Moon, Anderson seems to embody an elevated sense of trust — not only in the bandmates who contributed to the record, but also in himself. If you’re not convinced, the victorious group-sung “nah-nah-nahs” of early single “Julia’s War” serve as some good evidence, and even the Americana-tinged opener “Was I Wrong” — a thematic antithesis of sorts to the down-on-your-luck heartache of Cartwheel — takes a more self-assured approach: “Was I wrong, or did you sing my song?” Anderson asks, not evoking doubt as much as a sly, knowing smile.
After using a drum machine for their previous two records — a surprising fact about a project with a rock-out reputation — Hotline TNT went with live drums in the studio for the first time on Raspberry Moon. You can feel that lively energy most in one of the album’s best tracks, the starry-eyed “Letter To Heaven,” where rollicking pitter-patters bolster Anderson’s enamored suggestions: “We could fit in the van/ I think we’d make it in/ I’d make a joke and hope that it lands.” It’s unclear who, exactly, he’s singing to, but that doesn’t matter as much as the general air of emotional and spiritual openness the lyrics create.
Along with that newfound self-assuredness, Anderson also roots Raspberry Moon in feelings of love. Where Cartwheel sulked in a post-breakup stupor, Raspberry Moon — like a full moon — emits a refreshing essence of starting anew. Here, Anderson’s in love again: He’s dropping Swiftian levels of first names, he’s wishing he could call that special someone during the gig, and he’s maybe even wondering if he and that special someone should go ahead and share a U-Haul to the same place. “I wanna try/ Get butterflies,” he belts on the deliriously devoted album centerpiece “Candle,” his jadedness eclipsed by the prospect of finding “new things to share” with someone worth planning a future for.
Even when that pesky self-doubt creeps back in again, as it’s wont to do, on the sludgy album closer “Where U Been” (“Don’t tell me where you been/ We’ll find some time to talk about it”) there’s still enough hope elsewhere to balance it out, making those smitten moments feel all the more realistic and therefore rewarding. “You could be on all the plays/ Off Broadway,” he declares with an all-consuming reverence on “Dancing The Night Away,” a song with wedding first dance-levels of hope and elation. Optimism, after all, isn’t so much an emotional destination as it is a muscle that takes time and repetition to develop. It’s not always easy, but Raspberry Moon suggests it’s probably always possible.
Raspberry Moon is out 6/20 via Third Man.
Other albums of note out this week:
• HAIM’s I quit
• Tropical Fuck Storm’s Fairyland Codex
• U.S. Girls’ Scratch It
• Karol G’s Tropicoqueta
• Mount Kimbie’s The Sunset Violent (Live In Heidelberg)
• Ghostface Killah’s Supreme Clientele 2
• S.G. Goodman’s Planting By The Signs
• Yaya Bey’s Do It Afraid
• Benson Boone’s American Heart
• Neggy Gemmy’s She Comes From Nowhere
• Lil Tecca’s DOPAMINE
• ScarLip’s Scarred B4 Fame mixtape
• Kenny Muney’s Kenjamin Franklin mixtape
• YTB Fatt’s Da Foxprint mixtape
• Mo Lowda & The Humble’s Tailing The Ghost
• Peretsky’s It Doesn’t Get Cold in October Anymore
• Run Remedy’s Xtian Skate Night
• Slake’s Let’s Get Married
• OSKA’s Refined Believer
• Lukas Nelson’s American Romance
• Daily Toll’s A Profound Non-Event
• The Vegabonds’ Young & Unafraid
• Eric Hilton’s Midnight Ragas
• L’Eclair’s Cloud Drifter
• Chad Kouri’s Mixed
• Love Axe’s Optimism Paranoia Desperation Abolition
• Minais B’s And i know i can feel bad when i get in a bad mood
• University’s McCartney, It’ll Be OK
• Tan Cologne’s Unknown Beyond
• Tyler Bradley Walker’s The Sun The Moon The Earth And Me
• Little Mazarn’s Mustang Island
• GoGo Penguin’s Necessary Fictions
• James McMurtry’s The Black Dog And The Wandering Boy
• Volcano’s Volcano
• Edna Vazquez’s Te Esperaba
• Liam Finn’s The Howl
• Elijah Johnston’s Stupid Soul
• Osmium’s Osmium
• Sally Anne Morgan’s Second Circle The Horizon
• BAMBII’s INFINITY CLUB II
• Aitch’s 4
• Bas & The Hics’ Melanchronica
• Various Artists’ Edna Martinez Presents Picó: Sound System Culture From The Colombian Caribbean
• Joshua Redman’s Words Fall Short
• Surusinghe’s i can’t remember the name of this, but that’s ok EP
• Anthony Green’s So Long, Avalon
• Loyle Carner’s hopefully !
• Maxo’s Mars Is Electric
• Bee Blackwell’s Nine Lives
• Joliette’s Pérdidas Variables
• Redd’s Raunch Mixtape
• Nathan Salsburg’s Ipsa Corpora
• Brian Kelley’s Sunshine State Of Mind Season Two, Chapter One
• Yungblud’s Idols
• Meg Donnelly’s dying art EP
• M.U.T.T.’s Toughest Street In Town
• Dorio’s Super Love 3
• Kikimora’s Kikimora
• Sam Austins’ The Woods EP
• Matthew Shipp’s The Cosmic Piano
• Ric Wilson’s America Runs On Disco EP
• Gregg Allman’s The Gregg Allman Band – One Night In DC, May 15, 1984
• Robert DeLong’s Playlist Of DOOM: After DARK
• Tee Templeton’s Diner Of Doubt
• Various Artists’ The Buccaneers Season 2 Soundtrack
• Various Artists’ Trax Records: The 40th Anniversary Collection
• Whitney’s Playland’s Long Rehearsal
• Liam Finn’s Hyperverse
• Keke Palmer’s Just Keke
• midwxst’s archangel
• Che Noir’s The Color Chocolate 2
• Flesh Tape’s Gravesite EP
• The Sick Man Of Europe’s The Sick Man Of Europe
• Hide And Shine’s The Red Core
• my point of you’s This is my first heist EP
• Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Curse EP
• Alex Amen’s The Zorthian Tapes EP
• Nuclear Fear’s Pantomime Of Power EP
• Noah Rinker’s Burning Daylight EP
• Raynes’ Bloom EP
• PAMÉ’s Static Blush EP
• BAMBII’s Infinity Club II EP
• Simo Cell’s FL Louis EP
• En Masse’s newviolenttrends EP
