Album Review: Bobby Dove, Hopeless Romantic

Bobby Dove’s music is easy ⎯ easy to listen to, easy to love, easy to cry with. It’s the kind of paint-by-numbers worship of Country’s golden-age that would fall flat were it not for Dove’s outsized charisma and sly, heartfelt writing; they say what they feel and you feel what they say. Hopeless Romantic is Dove’s second record, and the production’s a bit slicker, the songs a bit sadder, and the pastiche transmuted to something glowering and joyful, pained and real. 

The title track opens things on the upswing, equal parts funny and sad, finding something akin to Neko Case’s acerbic heartache. Things slow down to a molasses drip on “Sometimes It’s a Lonely Road,” all bluesy guitar licks and pedal steel waves. The record finds its groove in these first two tracks, locking into a pattern of peaks and valleys that displays Dove’s range ⎯ the record is committed to its dust-blown country framework, but Dove still manages to tease out some interesting dimension. From Spanish language ballad “El Hormiguero” to solo road song “Golden Years,” Dove’s world is larger than it appears on first glance, a place where the old becomes new again. 

Hopeless Romantic was released February 12, 2021
Listen to it here