I almost couldn’t write this review because I was too busy dancing at this show. Hockey’s new single “Defeat on the Double Bass Line” may be more of a ballad, but it’s the minority in their catchy pop melody repertoire. Their past show at Glasslands featured many of the new songs off their forthcoming full length Wyeth IS, plus some of their older jams like “Too Fake” and “Calling Back,” and from the movement of the crowd I’d say nobody minded any of them.
Hockey – Defeat on the Double Bass Line by Hockey the band
In fact, it’s easy to literally pay no mind to most of Hockey’s tunes, and just take them at face value of being songs to put on a playlist at a party to dance to and shout over. “Defeat on the Double Bass Line” sounds the most introspective, simply by nature of being down tempo enough to sink in deeper, but as front man Ben Wyeth elucidated in our recent interview, there’s much going on as to how and why many of the band’s songs came to be.
It always amazes me just how fine of a line there is between perfunctory pop and pop that sounds shallow but goes deeper if you really listen, and how the two can be juxtaposed and even outright acknowledged, and how hard it can be to tell the difference between any of it sometimes. There could be studies done (maybe there already have been?) on the brains of people who like a song without thoroughly understanding it, and how the deeper message may be sinking in without them even realizing. That may also be what terrified conservative parents when they honestly believed their children were hearing demonic messages playing between the grooves of their rock ‘n’ roll vinyl records, but the point is that art always come from something real, even if the immediate message is being “Too Fake.” It’s still an honest and valid comment made by a real person that means something to them, and thus will inevitably mean something to someone else. Even better if we can dance to it while choosing to think or not think about it at all. Whichever may be the case for fans of Hockey, one thing was very clear at their live show – it was almost surprising how many fans they obviously had, and while I can’t conclude if this was an “I think, therefore I am” type of crowd, they (myself included) were definitely an “I hear, therefore I dance” crowd.
Right before Hockey took the stage, The Midnight Hollow presented itself as a band that could stand to use some more attention. Front man Spencer Draeger, drummer Andrew Segreti, and guitarist/synth man Trevor Murphy seem to split their time between San Francisco and New York, which may be a factor in the moody, atmospheric, multi-layered late night brooders they’ve concocted. Forming in a bar in the East Village of NYC might be an even more tell tale influence on their sound, but either way they’ve got some complex stuff going on with what is literally a brand new band, having just played their first show last summer.
Her Morning Glow by The Midnight Hollow
Keep an eye out for more Hockey show dates and everything else on their Facebook, Twitter, and follow their journey visually with Instagram.
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