Boston indie rockers Hallelujah The Hills have recently announced their fifth album, which is cause for much excitement around these parts. Their last album, Have You Ever Done Something Evil, was a masterful lesson in how fun and spirited indie rock can also have a weird edge (or literary, if by literary you mean the semi-dystopian present of DeLillo, Saunders et al.). The follow-up, titled A Band Is Something To Figure Out, promises to see the act once more in full flow with the first single ‘We Have the Perimeter Surrounded’ ripping off from the start. Ryan H. Walsh yells one-word lines with a backing chorus, resulting in something akin to controlled mayhem and probably the funnest three minutes of the year so far.
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Second single ‘What Do The People Want?’ is more focussed in its energy, as if some epiphany is breaking over it at that very moment and the rush is on to take it all in. If the previous track was a heavy stomp then this is more a walking-on-water style bounce, low and tight and joyous, infused with a keen sense of freedom. The lyrics are classic HtH, picking up the loose ends of our confused existence and grinning, though this time you get the feeling Walsh and Co. might have just figured something out.
“What do the people want?
The people don’t know what they want”
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You can pre-order A Band Is Something To Figure Out on vinyl, CD, or download via the Hallelujah The Hills Bandcamp page.
Cover photo by Courtney Brooke Hall