Bio
Hallelujah the Hills follows the legacy of disparate-sounding Boston bands like Mission of Burma, the Cars, Galaxie 500 and the Pixies who inject a clever and incredibly wry sense of humor into their lyrics while rocking forward with a straight face. There’s a salty grit here, a good time collision of the city’s working class roots with its constantly transient and inspired (post-)collegiate populace. Hallelujah the Hills hinted at greatness on their 2007 debut Collective Psychosis Begone. On their second full length album Colonial Drones, the band makes the leap and crafts a record that’s as sharp and full of wit as it is entertaining.
Lead singer Ryan Walsh’s lyrics are smart, funny and subversively mischievous, full of a dark and biting humor. Witness this verse from the album closer “Flight of the Paper Pilots”
all these pilots becoming part of my life
as my old self goes under the knife
the doctor says, “don’t worry, cuz
I know this procedure like I know the back of my wife.”
And that’s pretty damn well
Even the more melancholy points of Colonial Drones retain a sardonic lightheartedness. In the early-REM-esque “Classic Tapes,” where the band is joined on vocals by Cassie Berman of Silver Jews (another wry act surely found in the Hills’ library) we hear:
“forever is incomprehensible
but still attainable
with a little luck, a lawyer, and a fine tuned radio
the stop light changes but nothing else does
it kept me waiting just because
so delete all your dead friends from you cell phone
it keeps you inside that certain zone: home
Om Gam Ganapataye Namaha” (this is a hindu prayer to remove obstacles from one's path)
One of the more astonishing things about Colonial Drones is that, balanced against all this lyrical density, the album abounds with oodles of hooks and shout-along choruses to dance/sing/screw along to. Crunchy guitars abound and while the wheels aren’t being dramatically reinvented here (genre’s not the point, just the vehicle, well-loved though it may be), they are impeccably built for any speed, with raucous horns (courtesy of Brian Rutledge), irresistible keyboard flourishes (by Elio DeLuca) and more inspired instrumentation throughout to fuel them on. Titus Andronicus’ Patrick Stickles sings and plays guitar on the revenge song “You Better Hope You (Die Before Me)” and it’s no surprise that the two bands are friends, drivers in a car wreck of wonder and regret, wistfulness and irreverence, all bouquets and beer and shut-the-fuck-up profundity. Everything declines, decays, dies, but ain’t it all great?
Yeah.
Check out Colonial Drones’ album art and lyrics here: http://www.hallelujahthehills.com/drones.html
Discography
