Songs of hope and resilience, both of which were needed to see this earnest album completed.
Hope is Restless is Nicole Mish’s follow-up to her 2024 debut album, Whole Damn Sky.
The focus of this album is finding hope when the world around you feels broken in so many micro and macro ways. Songs such as Ease My Mind, Tell Me Something Good and Lose My Restless Mind capture the cognitive contortions required to stay resilient, while A Heart Wants and Take Me to a Place speak to the felt sense of navigating hurt and doubt.
These strengths of mind and heart are also at the core of the album’s creation. Due for release in October 2025, the album faced a major setback when co-producer Aeron Z. Jones died in a motorcycle accident in September 2025. In addition to dealing with shock and grief, Mish also faced the loss of files from Jones’s laptop, resulting in several songs having to be rebuilt with a new co-producer, Kris Gorski. The song The River Rushes was written a few weeks after Jones’s death, inspired by his time leading river tours in his native Wales.
There is a very earnest quality to both the songs and the singing. The blending of banjo, violin, and cello with the core guitar sound brings a variety that lightens, but in no way diminishes, the weight of the lyrics across the 13 self-penned songs. Mish’s voice has a depth and richness that recalls Edie Brickell, especially on On a Bench.
What is missing is a greater sense of the human being behind the songs. There is no doubting their personal nature, but at times the listener feels kept at arm’s length from the next layer of emotion. Such exploration would help the earnestness and intensity land more deeply and mitigate the risk of these songs occasionally straying into self-help territory.
There are so many good moments on this album that Mish’s next evolution as a singer-songwriter should be eagerly anticipated. For now, enjoy Mish’s journey to find and hold on to hope, a journey that encourages listeners to reflect on how they too find and sustain hope in this world.
