Noise Hotel's ‘Burning Pictures’ conveys painful romance and the hope to heal

It’s been three years since the Ontario indie-rock band Noise Hotel launched in their local music scene. With a Nov. 20 release and tour dates for the rest of the month, their latest single “Burning Pictures” shows their approach remains the same — telling stories of everyday life.   

The band’s bassist Christian Strong and lead singer Eric Montpool wrote the song during a kitchen writing session when they were still roommates at their old Ottawa home. With guitarist Matthew Scharfe and drummer Brendan Vandepol, the band explores heartbreak in relation to memory, time, and the eventual hope to heal and move on. 

The song envelops you with psychedelic feels through its soft intro of light cymbal flicks mixed with gentle guitar strums. It soon gives way to morose lyrics and steady, yet more mellow, guitar beats.

The band uses more distorted guitar riffs and a vibrant guitar solo that reverberates through the chorus, only to return to the soft and gentle guitar and cymbal duo. These tonal shifts reflect the push and pull of moving on and healing for the sake of the future. And yet, there’s still the habit to reflect on a shattered love falling from one’s velvet sleeve in the present time.

While heartbreak songs are nothing new in this genre — and music in general, Noise Hotel’s newest single is an indie-rock letter. It writes to you, letting you know that while today feels like a eulogy for a relationship now gone, somehow, someday, you’ll be OK. 

Among the song’s metaphors, the narrator draws circles in the sand, conveying a lost mind wondering if love can be possible again. What do you do, and how do you move on from something so painful when there’s no one there to tell you how? The song reveals the harsh truth: you have to figure things out on your own, including how to deal with a lost romance.

Another analogy the song features is the heartbroken protagonist going from wanting to burn pictures of them and their former partner to forget the pain, to eventually deciding to keep those same pictures to remember what was once a happy time.

The band’s music instills an important lesson about not closing ourselves off from heartbreak, as we evidently can’t escape from the hurtful memories of our romantic lives. Rather, we should hope to build emotional resilience over time — as hard and difficult as it is to do so.

If heartbreak songs are not really your thing, whether in indie rock or any other genre, then you won’t find much appeal with the band’s new music.  

While “Burning Pictures” benefits from its simple metaphors and vulnerability, Noise Hotel’s last song “Cigarettes In Summertime” is still by far my favourite of their recent singles for its catchy energy and lively guitar riffs. 

It’s nice to see Noise Hotel exploring simple and familiar song themes, not just fun and energetic rock pieces. The band knows happiness and joy, but they also know sadness and heartbreak like any young person facing life’s tribulations.

While ideally for heartbreak, this song might be what you need for any reason during the fall season.