Today's Hotness: Hallelujah The Hills, Luke Kirkland

>> Hallelujah The Hills' new record Have You Ever Done Something Evil? commences as a fully involved house fire, with snare drum barking from behind a curtain of dense electric guitars in time to the declamations of fronter and band mastermind Ryan Walsh; the proverbial roof of the opener, "We Are What We Say We Are," caves after about 100 seconds, as Mr. Walsh pleads his case directly, but quietly, into the camera lens, a thumb and forefinger at the lip of the lens and his other hand pressed reassuringly against the shoulder of a shaken camera operator. The song eventually burns itself out, but its euphoric rush and poignant ebb color the entirety the the five-piece's new record like a new red t-shirt in a load of whites. "We Are What We Say We Are" is an auspicious beginning to the Boston quintet's new and fourth collection, which the act released last week on its own Discrete Pageantry imprint. For months the set was going by the working title Do You Have Romantic Courage?, as we reported here in October, and that title survives, attached to another tune found within the cracking collection. The album highlight may actually be the more subdued ballad "MCMLIV (Continuity Error)," which is illuminated by Walsh's gently delivered, honest vocals and electrified by controlled crescendoes from the players. Like that song, Have You Ever Done Something Evil? isn't flashy, there's no gimcrackery here. Instead we have a showcase of exemplary songcraft -- the stuff that actually puts air in the bellows of a band built to last -- and vibrant performances. And while there was a laundry list of concerns for Walsh and band to grapple with over the last year or two (quitting a long-held job to focus solely on writing and recording; potentially voice-altering surgery; possible -- but unrealized -- pitfalls with crowdfunding; whether the band had good stuff left in the tank after releasing career-defining singles; and errrm... we dunno... extreme-energy cosmic rays?), Have You Ever Done Something Evil? delivers uniformly terrific results. Hallelujah The Hills is presently at the front end of a short west coast tour, and will play a hometown release show May 30 at Great Scott in Boston. The event also features sets from Tallahassee and Thick Wild, and starts late but apparently promptly at 10PM; there are full details right here. While you ponder that and other possible futures, stream the entirety of Have You Ever Done Something Evil? via the embed below, and click through the purchase on compact disc or as a digital download. We interviewed Walsh here last October for Show Us Yours #19.



>> The memory grows dim -- and we've determined over the years that quite a few of our memories aren't even real -- but nonetheless we're fairly certain that the first act we saw on the non-stage at the late, lamented Union Square rock club Radio was the Boston quartet Marconi. And while we didn't ever direct our full critical attention at the band, we did make this brief aside here two years ago: "Placing one's finger on the precise source of the quintet's appeal is tricky, but we think a lot of it can be chalked up to singer Luke Kirkland's crooked smile as he languidly looses lyrics from amid the band's engaging indie rock constructions." We've learned recently that Marconi has gone the way of the dodo bird (there are two splendid final recordings here and here), and that Mr. Kirkland has undertaken some solo work that promises to explore markedly more electronic textures. He is releasing the new music under his own name, and our first taste of same is the meditative pop mirage "My Southern Guides." Our immediate and somewhat odd reaction is that the patient and vivid song plots a middle ground between LCD Sound System's "I Can't Change" and Level 42's "Something About You." "My Southern Guides" is both lighter and more fluid than either of those touchstones, but Kirkland's ambition is no less grand. The song steadily swells, from a beat and vocal to an arrangement lush and distinctly retro-modern -- something like a bygone, Jetson-ian vision of a future that never came to be (perhaps that is what made us think of Level 42?). "My Southern Guides" is part of a planned collection of tunes Kirkland calls Jet Black Eggs (another song title); he does not intend to release these new songs as an album, but he does consider them a series. We recommend you watch this space for more new music, and stream "My Southern Guides" via the embed below.

Today's Hotness: Bad History Month, Darren Hayman

>> The Gospel According To D. Boon posits an axis bridging the chasm between New Wave and The Truth, along which we reckon the lion's share of unremarkable rock and roll acts lies squarely in the middle. However, fans of Boston indie rock can be proud of the fact that the city is home to a small number of acts whose songwriting situates them directly on the dot representing pure Truth. Chief among these -- along with Clicky Clicky fave bugcore heroes Krill, it should be noted -- is Bad History Month, the present solo iteration of the visionary duo Fat History Month led by songwriter Jeff Meff. Bad History Month's deconstructed cow-punk expertly renders wholly engaging and artful songs that are heavy on quiet, shuddering revelation. The preview track to the band's forthcoming split EP, "Staring At My Hands," is a prime example of the breathtaking results Mr. Meff can achieve by creatively arranging deceptively minimal sonic elements (drums, guitars, piano, feedback, voice) around startlingly conscious musings on mortality and solitary existence. Lyrics like "nervous outside of a bar, focus on a single star until it disappears, reaching for the comfort of just how small things are" splays open the idea of our intrinsic alienation like a butterfly pinned to a mounting board. Mr. Meff, like Krill's Jonah Furman, seems to conjure songs and articulate ideas from directly within the listener's brain, which is a strange point to make, but it's the best way we can presently think of to describe just how real, pure and true his musical ideas are. "Staring At My Hands" is taken from the forthcoming Famous Cigarettes split EP, which contains 40 minutes of new music from Bad History Month and Dust From 1,000 Yrs and will be released by Exploding In Sound as a limited edition cassette and digital download June 10th. The split will also be issued as an LP Aug. 4 via Limited Appeal; the pressing is on "mystery color" vinyl and comes packaged with a Colorful Camel poster, which in our estimation doubles the potential copyright infringement liability associated with this release. Bad History Month plays an EP release show June 9 show at Charlie's Kitchen in Cambridge's Harvard Square, and then embarks on a massive, two-month nationwide tour that wraps on or around Aug. 5. The dates are all posted right here (scroll down); all of that seems so very far away, but just think of the fruitful hours ahead you have to ponder your own fragile mortality? Stream "Staring At My Hands" via the Soundcloud embed below, and then pre-order Famous Cigarettes in your format of choice right here. We last wrote about Bad History Month -- then Fat History Month -- here a year ago February.



>> It's been more than a decade since Darren Hayman fronted the popular UK indie pop concern Hefner, but that distinction still follows him around despite a thriving solo career that is already 10 albums deep. Another sort of notoriety is at the heart of Mr. Hayman's latest solo collection, the minimal experimental synthesizer opus Wembley Eiffel Tower. The album pays tribute to the quixotic 19th century innovator Sir Edward Watkin, an Englishman who -- among other things -- attempted to erect a tower that would rival Paris' Eiffel Tower while drawing people to London's Metropolitan train line. The construction of the edifice was ultimately a failure spectacular enough to attract both some amount of ridicule and the attention of Mr. Hayman, who dedicates his 47-and-a-half minute synth composition to "Watkin's Folly." The most interesting thing about Wembley Eiffel Tower is that it is, in effect, the sound of an analogue modular synthesizer playing itself. Hayman employed such electronic curiosities as a programmable scale generator and clock divider to instruct the machine how to behave given certain conditions; he then recorded the results uninterrupted to six tracks, applied some reverb and mixed them. The result is a peaceful but mildly sinister meditation that recalls the soundtracks of certain British television programming that made its way to American public broadcast networks during our youth (the one thing we can identify for certain is "Dr. Who," but we are sure there are many other programs that fit the bill). Whatever your reference point for it, Wembley Eiffel Tower's attraction is a persistent cool vibe that at one and the same time feels dreamy and functional. Wembley Eiffel Tower will be released by Glass Reservoir Monday in a limited edition of 100 compact discs with a handmade cover carved by Mr. Hayman as well as digital download; we just looked and the CDs sold out on pre-orders, so NO SOUP FOR YOU. But you can stream the entire recording via the Soundcloud embed below, and pre-order the download right here.