REVIEW: Hoops - Routines

Laura Kerry

While listening to Hoops, you might at first be tempted to play a game of musical analogs, obsessively identifying what artists they sound like in a given moment. Rife with the familiar sounds of ‘80s synths and contemporary jangly guitars, the Indiana-based band provides plenty of fodder for such an activity. In the past, they’ve been compared to everything from Real Estate and Wild Nothing to Tears for Fears. But for the most part, the game never finds a satisfactory conclusion; a perfect match never settles. Above all, you will find, Hoops just sound like themselves.

That sound is something they’ve developed over a series of popular cassette tapes from the last few years, a 2016 EP, and finally, in their debut full-length, Routine, out on Fat Possum. The band’s history extends further back, though. The three core members—Drew Auscherman, Keagan Beresford, and Kevin Krauter—have been friends since the sixth grade. Hoops began with guitarist Auscherman as a solo ambient music project that he produced in his Bloomington bedroom. Drawn to the same music, the trio soon joined forces to form a casual band that eventually turned serious.

Listening to Routine, the band’s guitarist-led origins come as no surprise. Throughout the album’s 11 well-honed pop tracks, the guitar carries as much weight as the vocals. In songs such as “Rules,” “On Top,” and “Management,” the singer’s voice is subdued, subsumed by shoegaze fuzz, but the guitar is shimmering and bright as it weaves through catchy riffs. In others like “All My Life,” the voice and guitar share and trade the melody, shifting dynamically as they come together and pull apart. In “Benjals,” guitar serves as the only melody in an all-instrumental track, but the concise song still manages to latch on with its version of a verse-chorus structure.

But Routines doesn’t function on wordless catchy melodies alone; just as important to Hoops’ breed of pop are the stories at the foundations of their songs. As they said in an interview, the trio listens as much to Nick Drake as they do Michael Jackson and Sade. And in many of their songs, these contemplative origins show. “Still remember the clothes you wore,” they sing in a song about moving past feelings, “On Letting Go”; the line in the chorus, “All my life keeps getting away from me,” gives “All My Life” its title; and in the optimistically titled “Sun’s Out,” they sadly sing, “Meet me in the sunlight / Meet me where the moon shines / I can never be the one you want.” Reflecting on time and the anxieties of past love, screwing up love, and potential love in unadorned but expressive lyrics, Routines sometimes feels like New Order (here’s that game resurfacing) and other ‘80s new wave bands that couch sad-sack sentiments in sparkling synths and danceable beats. Bright and sunny but with the right touch of wistfulness, Hoops’ new album is the perfect mix to accompany us into the summer.

REVIEW: Moor Hound - Green

Kelly Kirwan

Every year there’s a surge in public displays of affection. Social media feeds run rampant with couples’ selfies, as various heart emojis garnish sickly-sweet Instagram posts. And, depending on where you fall on the spectrum of single or in a relationship (and everything else in between) this starry-eyed, rosy-cheeked holiday may just make you smile or squirm. For Moor Hound, the warmth of love’s beginning and the cold ache of loneliness left in its wake are inextricably linked.

His ode to February 14th is without any sort of shiny veneer. It’s a poignant, rawly-delivered six-track EP by the name of Green, courtesy of Darling Records. And it cuts deep. With every acoustic guitar strum, every tangy reverberation, your heartbeat falters. A true folk singer, Moor Hound’s songs (in their succession) feel like an epic poem for the modern-day romantic. He scatters details within his lyrics that feel like flashbulb memories, turning benign moments so commonly written off into vivid imagery, imbued with a meaning that only he can understand fully. Like seeing a former couple recall a private joke, we only pick up on their briefly shared smirk, a flicker in an otherwise extinguished flame.

A subdued, slightly pitchy timbre permeates Green, with a guitar at the forefront of these forlorn ruminations. There’s a theme of travel lightly peppered throughout, as the album’s introductory song opens with, “I drove south / You came out to the show / I got nervous,” and then later recalling, “I drove through the old neighborhood.” We see the connecting thread of bonds that have faded, and how bittersweet it is to remember. Moor Hound details the route which was carved out in parts of Florida and Georgia, perhaps on tour, and we see the irony of how being on the road, constantly pressing forward, can be the perfect atmosphere to reflect on the past.

"See You Around" details exactly that. The run-in with the ex, and the wave of dread that washes over us in response. Moor Hound paints the picture with a brazen honesty, “Play it cool / Pretend that I’m over it now / And I function at a normal speed.” Languid guitar plucks follow, the rise and wane of their notes emphasized by the stripped-down backdrop. The song ends with the sad realization that this relationship is a pattern, another failed attempt at connecting, which culminates in the heavy sigh of, “No, I’ve never been in love.”

And if this feels like the gut-wrenching antidote for the most jaded of your friends, hear me out. For all of Moor Hound’s heartache, there isn’t any sweeping of sense of cynicism throughout, like you might expect. There’s a little pain, regret, and nostalgia, but woven among those heavier feelings is a sense of hope. Moor Hound isn’t writing off love. He’s opening himself up to all it has to offer, knowing full well what’s at stake.

PREMIERE/INTERVIEW: Stone Irr - For My Friends

Raquel Dalarossa

Bloomington, IN’s Stone Irr—that’s first name Stone, last name Irr—first appeared on Bandcamp in July of last year. Now signed to Darling Recordings, the singer-songwriter is nearly ready to release his debut LP, which is slated to drop later this summer. His dreamy, guitar-centered pop makes an ideal match for the video project Acoustic War Machine. Led by videographer Zak Stoldt, AWM crafts intimate videos out of “take-away” acoustic shows, and Stoldt teamed up with Irr to produce a video for the song “For My Friends,” off of his upcoming album.

The video itself treats us to a raw acoustic performance by Stone on his guitar, set against a blustery mountain backdrop. It feels tender, yet powerful; gusty winds seem to materialize out of Stone’s own emotional output.

As it turns out, despite how well it all came together in the end, the making of the video was a little rocky. We spoke to Zak to get more details about it, and Acoustic War Machine in general.

ThrdCoast: Can you talk a little bit about how Acoustic War Machine came about, and what you’re trying to achieve with the project?

Zak Stoldt: Sure. So Acoustic War Machine started off as a way for me to just do my own thing. I was in school and was kind of just coasting through my major, which was Telecom Video Production, and I happened upon a video one day by La Blogotheque. AWM is pretty much a tribute to that. They do acoustic videos and I was just blown away. For the first time, I really felt like, "I want to do this, I want to make videos." It sparked my interest in a way that nothing in my major had done yet, so that’s kind of how it started.

TC: Yeah, Blogotheque is definitely the OG takeaway show. What do you think it was about that particular format that spoke to you?

ZS: There are so many music videos out there and I think the takeaway show format just felt so honest to me. People are so used to music videos that are sharpened and made to present this really perfect image of the band or the sound or whatever, but I was amazed at how honest this was and how close it brought you to the artist. It was almost awkwardly intimate, and I liked that. It was a breath of fresh air from everything that’s out there today.

Acoustic War Machine is the same sound setup every time, [and it’s] one take straight to the audience, so it’s really vulnerable. There’s almost always a mess up in the video or in the song. And as a videographer that’s what I’m attracted to these days. I’m so tired of things that are so polished.

TC: Yeah, totally. So, the video for Stone Irr… is it pronounced "stoner?"

ZS: Yeah, that’s actually his name.

TC: Oh, wow, I thought it was just a play on him being a stoner.

ZS: I know, everybody thinks that! He’s a cool guy.

TC: He’s a friend of yours?

ZS: We more or less got to know each other through making this video. I’ve been acquaintances with him but yeah, we’re friends.

TC: So how did this specific video come about? Can you talk a little about your process of picking locations for each of your videos and that kind of thing?

ZS: The setting is usually just something that we think will be interesting. There’s no deep-seated meaning behind it. We just try to find a place that will look and sound cool. I guess there is a little bit of thought as to, does this location match the artist? But sometimes it’s better if it doesn’t! So yeah, it’s just whatever we or the artist think will be a cool spot. For example, with the one I shot with Spissy, they had recorded their album in a parking garage staircase, and they said they wanted their video to be there, so we shot the video there. But there’s no super serious process behind it.

TC: So for this particular video did you feel the location matched Stone’s aesthetic?

ZS: I don’t think I knew that it was going to. Cedar Bluffs is a really cool location and we headed up there, and we honestly thought the video was going to be ruined because it was so windy. We hiked up about a mile and it was getting close to sundown, so we had to kind of hurry. We almost ended up heading back because one of our cameramen almost lost a piece of his gear on the side of this ledge. I had to hold his legs while he reached for it.

TC: Oh my god…

ZS: Yeah, it was like something from a bad movie! But we hiked up and when we got up there, it was super windy and there’s really nothing you can do about that kind of wind. Stone started playing and right as he kind of got to the biggest part of the song, it was like scary amounts of wind. It started blowing so hard that the camera was shaking, the leaves were flying past the camera, and I think I looked over at the other cameraman and we kind of shrugged and thought “This is ruined.” But luckily we got back, and we apologized to Stone for taking him up there and said, you know, we’ll do another video with you, because by that point it was dark. But I listened through the audio and it actually wasn’t that bad. It actually really matched the song because for some weird reason the wind kind of just miraculously picked up at the same moments that the song did.

TC: You guys definitely did a good job, the video sounds great! Was the song something that Stone just wanted to highlight from his upcoming album?

ZS: Yeah. The way I view Acoustic War Machine is it’s hopefully something that’s useful for everybody involved. It’s a way to take videographers and to really do what they don’t get to do in their jobs, just go for whatever they’re feeling. There’s no restrictions, really, and the same goes for the musicians. It’s really about them picking whatever they want. And usually it turns out pretty good!