A question for the kids (meaning all you fine folk 25 and under) before we get to the review of the super-solid recent 3-track output by local band Hovvdy that we got on a split with also damn good band Loafer. Right, so: do y’all still know Pavement? I mean, I don’t expect anyone who was born in a year numbered higher than 1990 to be jamming anything like Archers of Loaf or (definitely not) proto-indie like Minutemen, but Pavement is still a big deal….right?
Oh god, I hope that’s right; I’m just gonna keep believing it with my fingers in my ears to block out the chorus of “Who?” that I expect. Knowledge of the bands from the pre millennium that made music what it is is especially relevant to me when it comes to this review, because that kind of 90s indie that opened the doors for rock music to be both pop and experimental while also being approachable is super helpful in understanding is why these Hovvdy tracks are such soul-touchers for the fan of indie from days before the festival and the internet changed the genre into the massive machine that it is in 2015. Not that it’s bad now. Far from it. But, it’s very different now. There was a time when you really couldn’t expect even most music fans to know the shit you dug, and that’s the ancestral grounds where these three Hovvdy tracks seem to be returning back from on some sort-of musical time-warp pilgrimage: they drip 90s, and that drip is sweet (…though that sentence is kinda gross).
I figure that Hovvdy probably gets what I mean here to some degree, because they go so far as to use the term “slack” as one of the tags on the Bandcamp page for their part of the split, a term that very specifically references 90s indie, and an attitude which Hovvdy quite embodies with their tired-of-the-world’s-shit vocals and lyrics about houses and weird relationships and being an introspective person. Take this verse from second, gorgeous slow sleeper track “Phase” for instance: “i still feel you're special to me/everyone around agrees/it must be my phase of nothing/nothing sounds so easy to me/i can let things pass right by me/i was made that way.”
In terms of sound, you can clearly hear all the elements of your standard “Band” on these three songs- guitars, drums, keys and vocals are all quite distinct and easy to pick out- and the tracks are readily identifiable as yer “indie rock” type of music. Yet, they do that Pavement/Modest Mousey/90s experimentally-opened indie pop thing by making all of the elements just a bit weird. There’s fuzz over the intro beat to first track “Treat” that makes the snares sound like they’re coming out of era-appropriately shitty speakers, the guitars often twiddle around in slightly-out-of-tune land, tracks don’t stick to the typical song structure completely (like how “Treat” just ends quickly, when it damn feels like it should). The three tracks also fulfill the promise of bands like Pavement that didn’t shy away from accessing a wide palette of emotions and song-types within their genre by jumping around in the soundscape, from the up and fun energy (though still fully slacker-style) of “Treat” to the pretty thoughtfulness of “Phase” to the plodding, enveloping sound of very (oddly for a slow track) short “Color.”
These three tracks are music that, since I came across it, I keep coming back to for the right reasons when it comes to songs that play on old grounds: it’s nostalgic, but it’s fresh to death in that it does its own thing with these sounds from the past. It’s warm and inviting to this dude from the era who remembers suburban half-malaise- it reminds me of trips to the record store with a car full of friends who could barely afford the gas, the record store being not where you went to buy shit for a trendy collection, but the place that mostly sold CDs and you went because you knew you’d hear shit you just would never have found anywhere else. It’s music whose hand I wistfully want to hold on the hood of a car on the single hill overlooking our small hometown that we both feel weird about and want to leave, but both sorta know it’s a time and place we’ll look back on and miss.
I’d be interested to know how these tracks sit with kids born in the post-1989 set, but I’d venture to guess that there’s a ton here to love for you guys as well, what with the eternal fetishization of the past being a thing and indie like this still, as these tracks prove, obviously riding strong in the cultural zeitgeist. Give it a try yourself below, and if you have any feels on this here music that makes me feel old and young at the same time, let this semi-foagie know in the comments below. We’ll likely be getting to the Loafer section of this soon as well here on The Deli, though you should certainly go ahead and give ‘er a listen now, as it’s also damn decent indie weirdness. Slack lives, y’all.
