Halfsour
Boston’s Halfsour.
Boston, Massachusetts denizens of the DIY community Halfsour released their debut album Tuesday Night Live through Jigsaw Records & Nebraskan Coast on cassette. Rumored to have once been a Guided By Voices cover group; Zoë, Ian, & Matt follow-up their Reports 12″ split EP from Ride The Snake Records with something that would inspire both Robert Pollard and the shamble-core crowd to tighten-up their own sound sets of sensitive slacker pop.
Taking jangle cues from your post-punk obscure heroes and unloved & abandoned 80s idols on songs like “What You’re Waiting”, “Sensitive Rugby”, “Porch Sittin’”, and more; Halfsour today presents the world premiere of their b/w 16mm video for “IK” made by Peaches from the Barbazons, introducing the video with the following statement from the band:
“IK” is about Zoë being a teenager at boarding school, living in an ant
infested room, and then hearing Yo La Tengo for the first time and feeling really terrible about being unaccomplished and incapable of creating anything cool ever. The story that is the basis of this song is still relevant.Our awesome friend Peaches (who is in the band Barbazons) made this video
for us on 16mm film. He has a website with lots more of his work—find him
here.
In a song that finds Zoë reflecting on discovering the independent creative minds of yesterday’s musical canon, the video’s performance-based minimalism sees the trio attending to their instruments in a series of overlaying and overlapping images of each other like a montage array of screen test movie images. Zoë’s reiterations of “if only I could ride” bottle up all the best bits that echo the echelons of champions like Huggy Bear, the scuzzier side of Dolly Mixture, Lush, with nods to Ride, 90s college radio, and the previously mentioned Yo La Tengo. The aspirations and drive to achieve the lofty heights of the legendary greats goes from a daydream to a sonic tangible reality that instantly makes Halfsour a band to keep an ear on out in the Boston scenes. Read our following roundtable interview with the band.
Local Bostonites Guerrilla Toss taught us about the independent, awesome,and sometimes weird underground you all got over there, but we’re wondering what you all really like about your local scenes out there.
Zoë: Boston’s got a ton going on right now, which is awesome but also totally overwhelming. There are so many shows every single night of the week it’s totally impossible to see everything. There’s also a pretty diverse music scene which is cool but makes it even trickier to get a good feel for what’s happening—I bet there are so many bands in the city that I would love a lot but will potentially never hear. Boston is also a really transient city, which is sometimes a bummer but also means there is always an influx of cool, new stuff coming into town (as well as leaving).
Matt: In addition to the flow of people in and out of the city, there are constantly new configurations of people playing in bands, which tends to encourage experimentation and new sounds.
Ian: I’m a little out of touch, but needless to say the Boston music scene is massive and has everything. The grass is always greener, but I really like playing out of town at places that are less saturated with bands. Those shows usually have a weirder mix of bands and a more diverse and enthusiastic crowd.
Halfsour performing live.
So first things first; tell us about how Halfsour was formed, how you all originally know each other, and do you all actually make your own jarred pickles?
Ian: Matt and I were neighbors in college, and we played in a band together for a second. I think it was called The Gift? We played one show in someone’s garage in suburban Connecticut. I think we covered “We’re Coming Out” by The Replacements. This would have been around 2004, I think.
A few years later on, we were in a sort of obnoxious psych-y, jammy band called Dig Safe. Around when that was ending, Matt asked me to play drums with him and Zoe for a Guided by Voices cover set.
Zoë: That Guided By Voices cover band took place Halloween of 2013, and after playing together a bunch we discovered that we didn’t totally hate playing music together. We figured we might as well give it a go and, so far, it’s been really fun!
Matt: Regarding the pickle question, our lawyers have instructed us to not comment at the current time.
Describe the process of making the album Tuesday Night Live, and the past few years journey it has taken for you all to make this fun album.
Matt: We amassed a good pile of songs after releasing a demo and a split. Ian had to move to California with little notice for a few months so we had to quickly record all the drums in a couple days. We then recorded the rest over the course of months when the sky wasn’t dumping mountains of snow on us.
Ian: I moved in January, and when I got back at the end of April they had finished recording everything but the vocals. We finished those, and went to Sonelab to have Justin mix it. The door sound at the beginning of “IK” is a studio accident that we left in. “Mood Monster” and “Adult Friday” were songs from our first demo tape that we rerecorded for the album.
Matt: There’s not a whole lot of over-thinking in regards to theme or aesthetics song-to-song. We tend to write each song quickly and go with what feels right.
Zoë: I think that’s really the only part of our mutual love of GBV that comes through in our music–that aesthetic of not needing every song to be too similar to one another but still hopefully having enough of an undercurrent to make them feel like they fit together.
Throwback summer vibes with the Halfsour trio.
What was it like making the video for “IK” with Peaches from The Barbazons and how do you all feel the 16mm b/w touch impacts the song’s meaning about desiring great creative heights?
Zoë: Making the video was really fun. Our friend Peaches is a super low-key guy and made the whole experience really easy, especially because at least two of us totally hate being in front of a camera. In terms of the relation between the meaning of the song and the direction he took the video in, there honestly wasn’t a ton of thought put behind it on our part. Peaches does such an awesome job and we just let him have full creative control with the visuals. We had seen some other stuff he had done for his band and had total confidence in his ability to make us not look like idiots, ha ha.
Matt: It’s a really good feeling to support talented and creative friends by having them make art for you. Plus he made us look not stupid so that is cool.
Ian: It was great. We shot the whole thing in his studio in Cambridge. I can’t claim to have made that connection between the format of the video and the subject matter of the song, but now that it’s been mentioned, it’s pretty appropriate, huh? Honestly, the whole video was 100% Peaches: the format, the concept, every shot. His thoughts on it would be a lot more interesting than ours. He put a lot of work into it, and we are very happy with how it came out.
What other cool videos do you all have in store for us?
Zoë: We’re currently in the midst of planning our next video! It’s still very much in the early stages but there will 100% be something in the not-too-distant future.
Top 3 favorite things you all have read/seen/heard/etc lately?
Zoë: Honestly, I have been pretty into what Nebraskan Coast (based in Baltimore and run by Jack and Bobby of Princess Reason) has been doing. They just put out a 7” by our pals Romantic States and it is by far my favorite thing that I have heard so far in 2016. A couple other favorites that we’ve played with in the not-to-distant past were didi (from Columbus, OH) and our old pals Foul Swoops (D.C.).
Matt: I’ve been into drinking scotch, eating Indian food, and playing guitar while watching this thing called Netflix.
Ian: 1. Star Wars. Saw it with my brother and mom on Christmas. Super into it.
2. Cold Beat – Into The Air. Super good album. The first half is awesome, rocking pop. The second half is intense dark pop. I love this band.
3. Luke Stewart Trio as a duo, live at The CD Cellar. We played the last show at The CD Cellar in Arlington, VA last week, and the Luke Stewart Trio played without their drummer. It was the best jazz I’ve ever seen – very free, melodic, aggressive, and disciplined all at the same time.
2016 meditations & hopes?
Zoë: We’re definitely planning on touring as much as possible. We also just finished our next EP, which we hope to have out by the end of the summer. We want to keep up the momentum for sure.
Matt: We already have a couple songs in the works that aren’t even on the EP we just finished, so we’re well stocked for the foreseeable future.
Halfsour’s debut album Tuesday Night Live is available now via LP/CD via Jigsaw Records & on cassette via Nebraskan Coast.
