A darker, warier Hallelujah the Hills

One of my favorite why-aren't-they-bigger bands has made a new album, and it's considerably less buoyant the celebratory than the others...but still very much worth hearing. Check out my review of Hallelujah the Hills' No One Knows What Happens Next at Blurt today.

I said: No One Knows is more downbeat than previous Hallelujah the Hills outings, warier, more contained and considerably less exuberant. There are still massed horn sections and all-hands, group-shouted choruses, but less of them. There's a lot more smoulder between the explosions. "Get Me in a Room," the album's first single, sounds like Telephono-era Spoon, taut, world-weary, minimalist and the opposite of the giddy, literate excesses you expect from Hallelujah the Hills. "Nightingale Lightning" is more true to form, bulging with trumpet solos and weird string-and-opera-singer-samples and unstoppable in its upslanting chorus. Yet there's no mistaking the disgruntled, discouraged tone of an album that includes songs titled "Care to Collapse," "Dead People's Music" and "Hello, My Destroyer."

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While you're over at Blurt, why not read Ron Hart's piece on Flying Nun at 30.

Hallelujah the Hills strikes again

Their Colonial Drones is out this week on Misra Records. I reviewed it for Blurt and the review went up yesterday.

Hallelujah the Hills, out of Boston, build rough symphonies out of homespun materials and shouted choruses out of existential crisis. With their battered orchestra pit of brass and strings, slightly unstrung sincerity, and way with an unstoppable melody, they are, perhaps, the best latter day heir to Neutral Milk Hotel.

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“Blank Passports”