We All Have Hooks For Hands - The Pretender

We All Have Hooks For Hands
The Pretender (Afternoon, 2007)
Grade: A

Download: We All Have Hooks For Hands - "The Man Trying To Outfox Us All"

Disclaimer: Someone on this blog has financial interest in the success of this band. This person has paid me off in cocaine, hookers and swimming pools filled with coin to say they're awesome. Just kidding. While someone on this blog actually does have an interest in them, this is my honest opinion, and my words have been neither bought nor paid for.

So, I had been walking around with a Neutral Milk Hotel-shaped hole in my heart for a long time. But We All Have Hooks For Hands changed all that. The Pretender, Hooks For Hands' debut album hit shelves on April 17th, and I've listened to it a solid fifteen times since buying it last week.

We All Have Hooks For Hands, a nine-piece hailing from the great state of South Dakota, writes fun, psychedelic pop songs that have the exact kind of power and mayhem you'd expect from a band that size.

I always find it hard to describe a band like Hooks because they really are so extraordinary and diverse that words can't really do them justice without being too narrow or too vague. Hooks has all the freak-folk earnestness of Neutral Milk Hotel, especially singer Eli Show. Show has a manic, wailing voice that grips your attention right off the bat. It's good in the same way that Jeff Mangum's voice is good: It constantly startles you into listening to every last word on the album.

Musically, Hooks takes everything that is good about Broken Social Scene and Modest Mouse and adds even more mayhem. "Jumpin' Jean-Luc" and "The Teeth That Feeds The Lions" sway drunkenly under the weight of their own instrumentals. That sounds like a bad thing, but it's actually exactly what this album needs. The result of having so many guys in a band playing so many different parts is an album that is constantly pulling and pushing in unified but varying directions, creating this wonderful psychedelic confusion.

At other times, Hooks plays some rally sweet, '60s inspired pop. "Oh I'd Expect" is the prefect song for the perfect weather those of us in Minnesota are currently experiencing. And that kind of highlights what I just love about this album: It's diverse without being disjointed and it's poppy without feeling artificial. The Pretender is a remarkably fun album that harkens back to its influences while still forging ahead creatively.

MySpace Page

(April Wright)

The Battle Royale - Oh Martha Video

Man, this is just killing me. Let us all continue with the YouTube party. Granted, I'm totally biased on this one for obvious reasons, but I just need to share it. So hilarious! Complete genius.

(Ian Anderson)

Haley Bonar and Erin McKeown: the camera phone special!

Disclaimer: One of this post's subjects, Haley Bonar, is on Afternoon Records, in which some of this blog's writers have a financial interest. This doesn't change the fact, however, that Bonar is objectively awesome.

Download: Erin McKeown - "To The Stars"

I caught Haley Bonar and Erin McKeown at the Cedar last night, and hot damn. That was a show. Though I preferred McKeown's jazzy, bluesy, and extremely entertaining performance to Bonar's subdued, though lovely, set, the whole show was a perfect example of how the opener/headliner dynamic should work. Bonar gave what amounted to a beautiful warm-up; her songs easily filled the huge room, even though she only had a drummer as back-up.

McKeown came up next, and owned the stage from the first moment. McKeown's diminutive frame was already striking surrounded by the Cedar's giant space, and her look - bright orange t-shirt, yellow necktie, hair standing on end - made the overall visual immediately great. Then there's her songs, which sound timeless. Not only does she dip into both Tin Pan Alley and the Brill Building for inspiration, she does it in a way entirely her own. This is folk music that isn't exactly "folk" - it's part rockabilly, part swing, part pop. And McKeown's amazing guitar skills, played on an instrument making up a third of her size, are something to behold. She was backed by crack band Allison Miller on drums and Sam Kassirer on piano and organ.

Be a good music fan and check out her records Distillation, Grand, and Sing You Sinners (the latter being her new record, a covers album of standards).

(David Brusie)