Hush Puppies

Like Vines by The Hush Sound

It’s not often a band’s name is such a blatant lie, but the Hush Sound are anything but quiet.
Smashing piano keys with the force of an angry Ben Folds and banging drums like Animal from the Muppets, this quartet from Illinois don’t really have a low-decibel moment.
Especially during their 2006 album Like Vines, which is like being musically punched in the face, but instead of it hurting, it makes you start dancing.
The album explodes to life with We Intertwined, a song about love with band founders Greta Salpeter and Bob Morris’s lyrics embracing each other like the characters in the song.
The two, who met in High School, share lead vocals throughout the album and switch over with effortless ease, like tag-team wrestlers.
Sweet Tangerine and Lions Roar are other stand-out tracks on the album, crashing into your ears and sounding like musical numbers, backed with big bang-style orchestral bigness.
Even during the so-called softer songs, the strength of the instruments and voices makes it anything but background-music.
Maybe it’s the strength of Salpeter and Morris’s voices, maybe it’s the array of instruments used to bolster each song – an accordian here, a flute there – maybe it’s just good production skills. Whatever is it, it works.
I feel like I’m listening to the soundtrack to a west end play, Salpeter and Morris dueting with pitch-perfect voices. In fact, The Hush Sound – The Musical could work. They already have the songs, just scribble some script about Salpeter and Morris being star-crossed lovers or something and you have a play on your hands.
My friend Kirstine sold me the album off the back of We Intertwined but warned me “the rest of the album isn’t really like it”. She lied.
One slight criticism: Many of the songs are quite samey. I found myself humming one of the songs the other day and going straight into the chorus of a different song.
Sounding strangely like Ok Go, although sadly lacking the treadmill skiing skills to produce anything even close to a music video to match the Chicago-based rockers, The Hush Sound still rock my world. Check ‘em out.

N.B. The band have a newer album out – 2008’s Goodbye Blues. I have it somewhere and have only spun it a few times, but from memory it rocks also. Will review it soon.

I See London, I See Francis

Robert Francis @The Fly, Camden 9/11/09

The mystery that surrounds Robert Francis is how he manages to turn from socially awkward agoraphobe to passionate singer with the strum of one chord.
The Californian Emile Hirsch look-a-like wanders up to the stage like a man carrying the burdens of 1,000 souls, and fiddles around with his instruments like a 13-year-old before a music recital.
But once he starts playing a different Francis emerges – still tormented, like a prisoner recently released from 30 years incarceration – but a confidence flows out of him while he delivers his White Lies-esque mellow folk pop.
The most striking things about Francis and his band at The Fly in Camden last night was their apparent insistence to look like one another, all decked in plaid shirts with messy indie haircuts and David Beckham it-looks-like-I-haven’t-shaved-but-actually-I’ve-spent-ages-sculpting-this beards. It was like standing outside a GAP window.
Ignoring the appearance faux pas, Francis served up soulful sounds that lent a little of everything, at times sounding like roots blues from deep Mississippi and then flowing into country rock, all served with a dash of self deprecation and humility.
Which is less than can be said for Francis’ mid-song demeanour, a confidence, bordering on arrogance, that unfortunately manifested itself in more than enough cum-faces-during-guitar-solos than is necessary.
What is undeniable was the boy Robert’s voice, pitch perfect every song, and hauntingly chilling during each tormented verse. Coupled with melodically memorable songs and pretty boy looks, Robert Francis has potential. Just enough with the weird faces, my friend.