Featuring Grace Ward (voice, guitar, bass, beats, compositions), Jolee Gordon (voice, keyboard, bass, compositions) and Izzy Da Fonseca (drums, voice), NY/LA-based trio Houndsteeth follow principles of curiosity and mutual trust only possible within the closest of friendships. Coming next month on Otherly Love Records, their second album Hold Your Horses uses this close bond as a foundation upon which to experiment, pushing the outfit’s sound in new directions while offering authentic, joyous and often ambiguous pictures of all-too-relatable emotions.
With is slow unfurling, lead single ‘Rodeo’ serves as the ideal entry point for the album. The song starts with a relatively modest sound, the sparse arrangement of guitar and bass around the vocals sounding almost hesitant. But it soon blossoms with an increasing tempo and the arrival of additional vocals, eventually culminating in a big noisy crescendo. The gradual builds speaks to the track’s themes too, where understanding is gained not as some lightning strike epiphany but the slow process of trial and error.
“‘Rodeo’ is a song about feeling like you’re on the brink of gratification, but something is standing in your way,” as the band explain. “Sometimes that very block is your own fear—fear of being yourself, fear of trying something new, of being unsure your next move. This song is about finding solace in figuring stuff out by yourself while simultaneously coming to terms with and accepting feelings of loneliness as familiar.”
Artwork by Margaret Barry