BRNDA

In her essay “On Keeping a Notebook,” Joan Didion writes about documenting the everyday, unexceptional occurrences that make up a life. The point is to remember, in her words: “How it felt to be me.” Notice that, in Didion’s view, a notebook doesn’t chronicle how it feels, but rather how it felt, and this distinction matters, because time passes, feelings change, our memories solidify or they slip away if we’re not paying attention.

Ask the Brooklyn-based Hello Mary what their eponymous debut album is about, and they’ll pause for a long while before responding, not because they’re unsure, but because the answer seems so ordinary, so mundane. “This might sound vague,” drummer/vocalist Stella Wave warns, “but to me, this album is about accepting the state of things as they are at a given moment, whether it’s your relationship to another person or the world around you.” Pinpointing an individual thought pattern, or resounding theme, risks flattening the trio, who write music and lyrics in tandem, knotting their perspectives together into a singular consciousness. “We collaborate on everything,” bassist Mikaela Oppenheimer says, “from our lyrics to guitar parts and even bass and drums sometimes.”

Oppenheimer started the band with Helena Straight (guitar, vox) as freshmen in high school. When they met Wave by happenstance the three became an inseparable unit – as good of friends as they are bandmates. In 2020 they released their debut EP, Ginger and they followed that with 4 additional singles – “Evicted,” “Take Something,” and “Sink In” b/w “Stinge.” It was the singles – which unlike the EP were recorded in a proper studio – that garnered the band attention outside the confines of the Brooklyn music community. Wave describes them as the first proper introduction to Hello Mary. They led Julia Cumming of Sunflower Bean to laud them as her “ favorite new band” and Tonya Donnelly to call them the,”very rare band who nod to their influences while sounding completely new.” KEXP has since had them into their studios for a session. And it also led them to sign to the esteemed indie-label Frenchkiss Records.

Hello Mary – which was produced by Bryce Goggin (Pavement /Luna) – references alternative rock of the nineties alongside Elliott Smith and Jeff Buckley as influences, heard most vividly on the album’s simmering closer “Burn it Out,” but their contemporaries are bands like Palberta, Spirit of the Beehive, and Palehound, artists who don’t shy from unusual time signatures, careening feedback, and unconventional harmonies, all for the sake of surprising a listener. The album’s “Looking Right Into the Sun,” a song most honestly described as “delightful,” is driven by a tight and dynamic rhythm section that gives way to Straight’s crystalline and confident falsetto.

The album was written during a period of immense uncertainty. “We were battling things personally, the world was battling COVID,” Wave says. So there’s a darkness to it that isn’t apparent on first listen. Yet prioritizing sensation over narrative cohesion opens up the ability to make even the most lyrically devastating songs pleasurable. On the psychedelic “Spiral,” Straight and Wave harmonize to dazzling effect on the chorus, while Oppenheimer’s driving bassline tethers them to earth. “Is it a coincidence? You’re hanging out all night, while I’m on the other side,” they sing to an unknown other. “We’re singing about the paranoia that comes along with relationships, the sense of jealousy that feels like you’re on the outside of things,” Stella says. Relatability gives way to absurdity, too, an example of which arrives in the form of “Special Treat,” which opens with disarming harmonies that might recall a schoolyard taunt, or something more sinister, like the summoning of a coven. The earwormy “Rabbit” is, at its core, a straight ahead rock song that features one rock-star-esque guitar solo.

For a fledgling band, Hello Mary has enviable range, flitting between rock stylings with the ease of studied musicians. They’ve been doing this for a long time, albeit in dorm rooms and the privacy of their parents’ homes, but now they’re offering the product of hours of intimate, synergistic collaboration to the world. Hello Mary abolishes the individual in favor of collective catharsis, and though its singular meaning eludes the band for the time being, decades on it will articulate the most elusive feeling: “How it felt to be us.”

This is an all ages event

Songbyrd

Hello Mary

Ginger

Gigs

Washington D.C.

Thursday, May 4th 2023  
Cola + Gauche + BRNDA  
9:00pm - $15 - All Ages

COLA  
https://bandcola.bandcamp.com/  
Montreal, QC

Deep in View is the debut album from former Ought members Tim Darcy (vocals, guitar) and Ben Stidworthy (bass) alongside Evan Cartwright (drums). Titled after philosopher Alan Watts’ anthology of the same name, the record is built on a foundation of elegant guitar grooves and knotty rhythms, offering commentary on modern life and technology through curious lyrical vignettes, where quotidian objects and scenes are never just as they seem. Deep In View is equally a product of introspective songwriting as it is a consideration of the abstract landmarks of an increasingly media-mediated society. It also presents the most concise and melodic songs Darcy and Stidworthy have written to date.. The album sounds streamlined and intentional, as the rhythms of the punchy and exuberant guitar parts, urgent basslines, and unexpected drum patterns all tangle with each other in an elegant dance. At the center of all these elements is Darcy, whose characteristically wry voice shifts from detached to decisive to distressed, throughout the album’s course. Both enigmatically dense in meaning but precisely intricate in sound, Deep in View is an album that sparks novel interpretations with every listen, like an art object that takes on new shape with each angle from which you hold it.

GAUCHE  
Washington, DC  
https://g-a-u-c-h-e.bandcamp.com/

A People's History of Gauche, the debut LP from Washington, DC’s Gauche, is a collective catharsis of anger, frustration, & trauma through creativity. Jason P Barnett, Adrienne CN Berry, Mary Jane Regalado, Pearie Sol, & Daniele Yandel find their agency & joy through creating & performing music together in 36 minutes of groove-filled power punk.  
When asked about the genesis of the title, Daniele cited this definition: “A people’s history, or history from below, is an account of events from the perspective of common people rather than leaders, the story of mass movements & of outsiders.” It’s a fitting title for an album that tackles such heavy topics as anxiety, capitalism & colonialization, & healing ancestral traumas, as well as dismantling & dissecting patriarchy, creating beauty in the face of oppressive forces, & resisting exploitation. These are vital songs manifested in a celebratory manner, created quickly through the group’s self-proclaimed “Gauche magic.”

BRNDA  
Washington, DC  
https://brendadc.bandcamp.com/

BRNDA is a four-piece from DC with a few rules: No covers, No love songs. Simple enough, right? Think again. After perusing through the late 70s, 80s, and 2010s for musical detritus, it was discovered that only the least ostentatious, most off-kilter sound is fit for BRNDA. And so, if you find yourself unable to put your finger on just what you’re hearing, it is because BRNDA is not just some rehashed comfort listening.  
One could say that the stream of consciousness featured in 2021's Do You Like Salt? (on Crafted Sounds) is arguably BRNDA’s richest yet. Topics of interest include salt, tennis, existentialism, poached avocado, your 45-year plan, tea, incorrect orders... all of which are expressed through a carousel of honest vocal performance (singing, shouting, speaking, radio static) from all members of the band. Above all, BRNDA pulls off an unpredictable and incredibly entertaining sound that can shift between testy art punk, noisy no wave, and groovin’ indie rock at any given moment. Not to mention, there is also a tasteful dusting of saxophone on the record. What is there not to like about all of that in a 10-track, sub-thirty-minute package?

ACCESSIBILITY INFO: Comet is wheelchair accessible

All Ages

BRNDA

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