Attachment
The Australian music label Hidden Shoal Recordings has announced the release of ‘Hydra’ by Seattle-based sci-fi pop band Hotels, the first single taken from their forthcoming sophomore album Where Hearts Go Broke.
‘Hydra’ is the winning opening salvo on an album crammed with impossibly catchy pop music, and the perfect introduction to Hotels’ addictive sound. Crisp, propulsive drumming and beautifully melodic bass playing are buoyed up by sizzling synths and chiming guitars, with Blake Madden’s vocal lines the icing on this delicious, hook-heavy cake.
With inimitable charm, the song tells of a doomed romance on a Greek isle, pulled off with the kind of verve and panache that only a band like Hotels could muster. Sophisticated yet accessible, ‘Hydra’ whets the appetite for Where Hearts Go Broke’s endlessly replayable pop genius.
“Hotels fuse elements of new wave, goth, and surf so seamlessly that genre tags will be the last thing on your mind when you hear their bittersweet, atmospheric pop songs” – Time Out New York
Hotels makes hook-heavy sci-fi soundtrack synth-rock that goes for the jugular, both sonically and melodically. Picture the bastard children of Devo and Joy Division, pushed down the street in a stroller by Claude Debussy, tucked in at night by the Cocteau Twins, read bedtime stories by Kraftwerk, and baby-sat by your sister’s cooler older friends Stereolab and The Pixies, while they tore out the guts of old synths in the garage. The result is the most relentlessly paced, hauntingly melodic, damn catchy pop music you’ve never heard, each song an end credit for the weary traveller or the romantic dancer; a tune you can listen to just before you die.
Hotels was founded in New York in 2003 by Blake Madden (bass, vocals). Blake moved to Seattle in 2006, creating two different divisions of the band on opposite coasts. The core band in Seattle comprises Blake, Brendan Malec (guitar), Kyle Frankiewich (synths), and Max Wood (drums). Additional members Rich Bennett (guitar), Hidden Shoal solo artist and songwriter in the band Monocle, and Rich Spitzer (synths, vocals) play shows on the east coast.
‘Hydra’ is available for free download from the HSR Store until the release of Hotels’ new album, Where Hearts Go Broke, on Valentine’s Day 2009.
Hidden Shoal Recordings is an Australia-based independent music label that has earned a reputation for releasing exciting and engaging new independent music that is not bound by genre or style. Hidden Shoal Recordings was chosen as one of the top 10 favourite labels of 2007 by Textura magazine and has been dubbed “This generation’s 4AD” by prominent New York radio host DJ Mojo.
Photo:
http://www.prlog.org/
