AEM077 The Hibernauts

I’m glad I over­came my fear of fun in music. Oth­er­wise, I might have never enjoyed The Hiber­nauts. I still haven’t quite fig­ured out what it was. I came into being a con­sumer of music from a steady diet of “oldies 103.3″ out­side philly, which is pretty much what my par­ents chose to have on in the car. But when I became a mod­ern music con­sumer, I skewed away from musi­cal lev­ity. The first CD I got was Limp Bizkit’s “Sig­nif­i­cant Other.” The sec­ond was Pow­er­man 5000. Part of me feels the need to defend this, but what­ever, I was like 12 years old. I was young, kinda angry, and lis­tened to bad nu-metal, and had lit­tle inter­est in “fun” music. Even when young-me started skew­ing softer, it was to things like Low, Mog­wai, etc., not party pop jams. I think fun seemed substance-less?

I’ve changed though. I’ve seen the fun­light. There’s a hid­den bril­liance to good “fun.” Because of course, fun with­out any sub­stance isn’t really fun at all. And yet that which is fun hides behind the coun­te­nance of, “hey man, we’re just hang­ing out. No need to get seri­ous in here.” But in that pure vis­ceral enjoy­ment is a link to some­thing very real and poten­tially last­ing. The music in the made-up-genre-I’m-calling-Fun lasts with us because it does some­thing to us, like all music does, beyond just dis­tract­ing us from traf­fic for 15 min­utes. What on earth does it do?

Fun, of course, is not the true sub­ject of this review. The Hiber­nauts are. Hail­ing from Saint Louis, The Hiber­nauts are in the release period of their new album, Vel­vet Suit, their full length fol­low up to 2007’s Peri­odic Fable. They’re a decid­edly tal­ented rock group who accom­plish the increas­ingly rare feat of achiev­ing an indie aes­thetic while still exhibit­ing that yes, they can be pre­cise with their writ­ing and instrumentation.

Push­ing play on A-side “Inter­mu­rals” drops you right into the fun zone (which I imag­ine is sim­i­lar to a Dis­cov­ery Zone). The major chords start a-rippin’ and some jovial lit­tle note bends get your head bob­bing. Two sec­onds in, the beat kicks and this song is off to the races. We’ve got lead singer/guitar play Tom McArthur oh-oh-ohhing through the verse. We’ve got guitarist/vocalist Jack Stevens com­ing in from the left, Mr. Chad Rogers with a decep­tively funky grove on that cho­rus kick, Bill Vehige on some light tin­kly keys and Brett Ram­sey dri­ving the song for­ward with clas­sic pop finesse.

“I’m gonna put on my vel­vet suit. I’m lyin’, I don’t have one, I think its fun.”

Very astute, Song Lyrics. It is fun. Jesus, its fun. The gui­tars wash in and out. The bass scales up and down until clan­nggg, the pick scrapes and it’s over. But there is a human pas­sion to the fun being had here, most musi­cally appar­ent in the con­tin­ual for­ward march of the drums and the schwika schwika wahhh guitars.

“If you knew the fire…and the thunder…that I feel.”

Yes! Though the pri­mary mood is fun, this song, and all suc­cess­ful fun­pop music retains its human essence. I have trou­ble with things like, oh, let’s say, Chromeo (why not? I need an exam­ple), because some­times I for­get that there’s peo­ple mak­ing the music. Pre­ci­sion is one thing, but take a Ratatat—just as pre­cise, but much more FUN and much more HUMAN; in fact, much more of both because of the other. Much more fun-man.

The Hiber­nauts never let you for­get that there are five dudes play­ing this music. Five dudes with beat­ing hearts and maybe beards and pos­si­bly girl­friends, and apart­ments and bus passes and too many dishes in the sink. This is my favorite thing about rock music—sometimes I like music because it’s reaches an inhu­man place, inhu­manly smooth, inhu­manly vicious, inhu­manly robotic, but rock music is music made by peo­ple you can instantly imag­ine with itchy faces and nylon stringed acoustic gui­tars in the cor­ner of their tiny 4 per­son apart­ment, just like me, just like you. (Ok, I’m lying, I don’t have one. But I think it’s fun…)

I like this the­sis because I think the B-side “Vil­lain” sup­ports and strength­ens it even though, at face value, it should under­mine this lit­tle party I’ve got going here. But fol­low me any­ways. “Vil­lain” is not a party title. And the song is gen­tle. It has an emo­tional edge to it. It uses a robot for beats. There’s some slow keys. Oh, and strings, strings can’t be fun, right? Strings are in orches­tras, and those are very seri­ous. But some­thing awe­some hap­pened after I heard this song, oh, I don’t know ten times. I started hav­ing an awful lot of fun. The low organ three-note pro­gres­sion is deceiv­ingly groovy. And sorry, Hiber­nauts, but that’s a catchy cho­rus! You can­not escape! It’s soft and mel­low and the lyrics are you lied! But gosh dar­nit if that isn’t a fun lick! I feel almost guilty get­ting a lit­tle groove on to this song, but when you can write songs and craft melodies, that’s what hap­pens, even when the mood is tempered.

Look, we love music. And when we hear human­ity in it, we have a bit of fun. Lis­ten­ing to sad songs is, under­neath the sur­face, kind of fun. I think a lot of the times peo­ple for­get that when they just set out to “rock.” No one wants to hear you just “rock” because, geo­log­i­cally speak­ing, that sucks. You need to con­vince us that you’re just rock­ing, while actu­ally doing more. The whole rock and roll imagery is built into this deception—the care­fully arranged cover shots of every­one look­ing super casual, the mil­lion dol­lar videos of the gui­tar player just doing, “what­ever he feels.” This is why rock and roll is dif­fi­cult; this is why rock and roll is more fun than Chromeo (no hard feel­ings, dudes). This is why rock and roll is Amer­i­can and this is why rock and roll really isn’t going anywhere.

The Hiber­nauts clearly under­stand all this, to the point that even when they aren’t rock­ing out, the lessons they’ve learned are still present. Being fun is seri­ous busi­ness peo­ple. Now, doff your hats and com­mence the rocking.

Rick Andrews

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