While such a weird band name, Hovvdy, might initially lend itself to some form of detachment – alienation, but just one listen to the band’s new single stirs feelings quite the opposite. Withdrawn and sullen though it is, ‘Problem‘, which is the lead track from their forthcoming full-length release, feels remarkably familiar and ingrained, like a submerged sadness that can’t be placed, like that tug of wanting, for something, anything, else.
Released via a collaboration between Merdurhaus Records and Sports Day Records, the duo’s new album will be called “Taster”and will be released on April 15th, and follows their previous two EPs which are well worth exploring over on their Bandcamp page.
Speaking of the new record, Will Taylor said: “”Hovvdy came on unexpectedly. Charlie and I only began collaborating soon after we were introduced to each other at the end of 2014. Over the past six months we’ve been all over Texas borrowing/renting equipment and recording Taster in friends and family’s houses. Despite not playing with each other for very long, we’re really proud of this album and how direct it sounds.”
As already alluded to, the “Taster” LP is preceded by new track called ‘Problem‘ and it’s a beautifully compelling starting-point; a sunken anthem for a grey day that perfectly sets the mood for what follows on this wonderful album. The guitars sway languidly like trees caught in the bracing breeze, while that most lacklustre of vocals portrays a removed sense of sadness, solemnity…a quiet ache for things that you can already feel slipping away while you sit by and watch it happen. In spite of, or perhaps because of, this there’s a real beauty to the way ‘Problem‘ sounds, one that paints pictures of faded childhood memories, of towns and people left behind.
Hovvdy is Charlie Martin and Will Taylor.
“Problem” recorded and mixed by Hovvdy,
The Fat Angel Sings 