Phillipe Roberts
Every year, the next crop of older indie bands rides the latest nostalgia wave back into relevancy. Some never escape the cash-grab label, but others are lucky enough to collide with the arc of collective memory at a rare moment, old ideas reinvigorated by a timely historical synergy. The recent reunion of the Breeders absolutely comes to mind. Howard Hello, a duo composed of songwriters Marty Anderson and Kenseth Thibideau, retreated from view nearly ten years ago after a short run of records that aimed to “craft music inspired by the American Zeitgeist,” taking the form of lavish baroque pop arrangements that occasionally flirted with ambient washes of sound. Released approximately one year after the end of the 2016 presidential election, their reunion album, Election Year, takes the latest flashpoint year as a signal to renew that initial mission. Sidestepping appeals to nostalgia to turn in a therapeutic protest album, Howard Hello return eager to tackle old themes through the lens of a noticeably darker era.
Lyrical content aside, the soundscapes that dominate Election Year take their cues from the lush orchestration that characterized their earlier work. The sound is slathered with a heavy coat of reverb that gives it a melancholy, pastoral feeling, echoing the folk-oriented post-rock of Do Make Say Think and the lighter moments of Broken Social Scene. Finger-picked guitars meander across delicate plinks of piano and drums thud or simmer at a marching pace. There’s a state of constant ascent, with the tracks blooming and growing to swooning crescendos, aided by the addition of strings and horns. The expansion of the instrumentation is a massive benefit to their overall sound, and Howard Hello treat the viewer to a constantly evolving sonic landscape to match their lyrical ambitions.
Lyrically, the tracks attack the despair and opportunism springing from the election with equal fervor. “Simon Say” takes a stab at naming the callous forces arrayed against them—“DOD, NRA, Goldman Sachs”—melting them down with a heavy dose of vocoder on the vocals. Howard Hello have always used electronic elements, but letting this touch extend to the human voice reinforces the ominous atmosphere of Election Year to a wonderful degree, especially when paired with more organic instrumentation. The chanting of “mass civil disobedience” on “MCD” sounds both inviting and terrifying against the airy cascade of acoustic guitar. “Out” continues this mantra pattern with a plea to externalize despair into positive action, grooving along to tambourine and shuffling drums as it builds to a crescendo of frantic trumpet soloing. “Vote” forsakes percussion entirely except for a distant clatter, building a gently unfolding dirge of strings instead.
By taking the risk of making a deliberately political record, Howard Hello are constantly wrestling with the possibility of sounding overly earnest. Initially, the direct naming and shaming of a track like “Simon Say” felt grating in its directness, and similar moments crop up elsewhere on the record at first pass. But allow yourself to sink into the melodies and bask in the emotional swells of instrumentation, and it starts to sound and feel appropriate on the second pass. “Greenhouse” does it best the first time, its climate change-focused lyrics playing a majestic back and forth with the evolving landscape. The effect is a dazzling post-rock anthem that both soothes old wounds and galvanizes you toward direct action.