Music Reviews: Artist Archives
Hood
The Lost You EP
Despite working in (relative) obscurity, Hood has nevertheless been an incredibly prolific band, releasing a number of full-lengths, singles, compilations, and remixes in their 15 year history (has it been that long already?!?). Why, this year alone, they’ve already released a new album (Outside Closer), 2 CD singles, and 2 7”. As a result, Hood can sometimes be frustratingly difficult band to keep track of over the years; as soon as you think you’re all caught up with the band’s sonic endeavors, you find something else you didn’t even know existed.
Fortunately (for me, at least), the band has yet to really disappoint with anything of their’s that I’ve picked up. Even their weakest stuff—and I’ve yet to find a release of their’s that was truly weak, though I only have a fraction of their total discography—contains at least a couple of nuggets well worth the sticker price.
The Lost You EP is a uniformly solid companion to Outside Closer. The single and title track was one of my least favorite tracks on the album, simply because it’s disjointed, glitch-like structure is so at odds with the pastoral soundscapes that drew me to the band in the first place. But even then, it’s not a bad track, and is a far more successful combination of glitch and fractured electronics with pop music than what I’ve heard from other bands attempting a similar sound.
Outside Closer
I know that, for some, Hood’s experimentation with glitchy electronics on Cold House was a bit too much on the gimmicky side (to say nothing of their collaboration with members of experimental hip-hop outfit cLOUDDEAD). While the electronic stylings of Cold House aren’t entirely gone from Outside Closer, they’re present in a much more refined and natural form, and feel much more solidly integrated into the band’s overall sound. As a result, Outside Closer feels like something a missing link between Cold House and the more pastoral sounds of Rustic Houses Forlorn Valleys and The Cycle Of Days And Seasons.
Cold House
Getting into a Hood album is never an easy process. The very nature of their music, with its lo-fi background, subtle experimentation, and inherent gloominess (a trait seemingly inherited from the English countryside), seems initially resistant to any listener efforts. As much as I’ve liked Hood’s albums in the past, I’ve always felt kept at arm’s length. Rather than me absorb the album, it’s almost as if I have to wait for the album to absorb me, to grow on me like so much moss and ivy.
But as isolationist as this may be, Hood has never taken the easy route with their music. Listening to something like “Rustic Houses, Forlorn Valleys”, it’s easy to see how Hood could slip further and further into their gloomy, Disco Inferno-styled musings. Eventually, the music could become insular to the point of being ponderous and banal.
But then along comes something Cold House, an album that finds Hood expanding on everything their previous two releases (Home Is Where It Hurts and The Cycle Of Days And Seasons) only hinted at. Cold House is not necessarily an easy album to listen to; indeed, one finds it almost begrudging to admit how great this album is, because again, it holds you at arm’s length. But given the creativity and genre-twisting on display, it’s morose exterior becomes all that more inviting when compared to the narrow context that Hood’s music would seem to imply.
Home Is Where It Hurts
Considering that Hood have been churning out damaged lo-fi pop music for nearly a decade, it’s somewhat surprising that they’re post-whatever approach to music can still be so interesting. If you’ve never heard Hood before, this is as good a place as any, simply because it does a fine job of pairing their earlier sound with a few new twists. Although not necessarily as absorbing as their previous albums, like The Cycle Of Days And Seasons, Home Is Where It Hurts still contains a healthy dose of the band’s intriguing blend of melancholia, autumnal sounds, and pastoral post-rock.
The Cycle Of Days And Seasons
Why does every picture of England that I see always look like the saddest, most melancholy place on Earth? English countrysides always seem to be the most dismal places; the sky is always this sad shade of grey, the land is covered in fog, the skyline is littered with old crumbling factories and cottages overgrown with ivy and weeds.
The Cycle Of Days And Seasons certainly sounds like it was recorded in such a place. It’s a minimal, sad affair. You could describe it as “mellow”, but “mellow” implies that the music is relaxing and comforting. Hood’s music is not. A sense of claustrophia and oppression lies under the surface of every song here. Not oppression in the sense that you’ll find yourself suppressing an urge to slash your wrists. Rather, it’s akin to that feeling you get in late autumn, when it feels like the sky has been grey and sunless for far too long, like you’re going to go crazy if you wake up to one more rainy morning.