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Boston's Hooray For Earth are either twenty years too late
or they have tapped into music that a new generation is ready to call
their own. Either way, they stack their tracks on their self-titled
full-length album with layers of Cure-like electro-pop channels
and recesses of Klaxons-ribbed club beats. Guitarist/lead vocalist
Noel Heroux has a hypnotic voicing that blends into the melodic
ethers helmed by guitarist/synth player Gary Benacquista while
kinked by a soft throbbing metronome in the rhythm section of drummer
Chris Principe and bassist Seth Kasper. The band's synchronicity
is diligently timed with loosely moving figments that have an ethereal
base and fluid brushstrokes so emblematic of Radiohead. Produced
by Noel Heroux and Brian Brown, the band's self-titled album
may not sound innovative compared to the new wave/electro-pop music
of the '80s, but it is a pleasing album that has several assets to
its credit.
One of those assets is the glittering display of sonic bliss coruscating
"Magazines" and the club-rock pulsations fuzzing up "Want
Want Want." Other tracks show a retro-pop glisten like "How
Are You Here" and "Heartbeat" reflective of The
Duke Spirit. Some numbers are dark and brooding like "So
Happy" and "Oh No," but most seem right out of the
'80s like "Take Care" and "This All Fades." The
electro-pop symphonies that light up "Something Strong"
are elating and put orchestral swirls into HFE's electro-pop cauldron.
The lyrics complement the ethereal tones with a bit of a romantic
flare like in "Take Care" with verses that declare, "Push
me hard because I wanted to move / Yeah I wanted to move / I've got
to move… It's a fact, I'm never going no where without you…
Will someone take you away / I hope not… When I wake tomorrow
/ I will change, I will change." The optimism in the words and
music is prevalent throughout the album, and gives one a sense that
life can be good and the world can be better.
Hooray For Earth's self-titled album is a show of fuzzy pop with
club beats and a few cubes of ethereal bliss added into the mix. Exhibiting
signs of '80s inspired electro-pop and 2000's hypnotic-pop sensibilities,
HFE's songs are a menagerie of weightless figments gliding across
a smooth surface. One of the band's biggest assets has to be their
optimism, which after the first track, much like a wildfire, blazes
fast and furious through the entire album with nothing to impede its
path.
-Susan Frances
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