Hooray For Earth

Rickety Transmissions from One Man’s Ad-Hoc Demos

By Christoper Brook
Photos By Laura Barisonzi

In between nursing cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a smoldering Pall Mall cigarette, Noel Heroux looks a little lost, even in his own rehearsal space. Bending down, the Hooray For Earth singer removes the nut from a broken guitar, shaking his head. “That’s the problem with this room, everything’s breaking,” he says.

Above, a neon Miller Lite sign hangs from the rafters; tangled Christmas lights are strung up in the corner and below, a mess of silver glitter and wires litter the floor.
“I don’t really have one place I live,” Heroux says nonchalantly at one point.
He goes on to describe how he once lived here, in this windowless room, for three years, cut off from most forms of communication. Heroux now splits his time between Boston and New York like a musical nomad, sleeping on couches in Manhattan as he does freelance music work.

Over time, he’s catalogued hundreds of sound bytes on tape, everything from digitized beats to poppy refrains. Like a puzzle, each snippet ultimately finds its way into Heroux’s demos. By taking these simple ideas, Heroux refines them into carefully planned demos that are more complicated than one might think.
“It’s not like the demos are just me with an acoustic guitar,” Heroux says, “Everything is laid out very specifically.”

It’s a wonder how band members could get in a word edgewise. But the rest of the band — Chris Principe on bass, Seth Kasper on drums and Gary Benacquista on guitar/keyboard — manages a squabble-free existence pressing on under Heroux’s watchful eye. It’s his music, management and ideas that appear to be the glue that keeps Hooray For Earth together.

In 2003, Raymond, the band’s previous incarnate, practiced at a dilapidated naval warehouse in Charlestown, Mass. The practice space doubled as Heroux’s place of residence at the time, a room where he spent hours on end experimenting with instruments and cutting tracks. It was around this time that Kasper — a drummer the band had recruited fresh out of college — purchased a cheap $22 children’s drum set from Wal-Mart.

“It even came with these little drumsticks and cymbals,” Kasper says, who also drums for other bands as well (Wild Light, Bleu), as he shows off what remains of the toy.

Kasper holds up two maroon drumheads that he’s screwed together to get a lower tone when striking it. Scratched and worn, the head of the drum is falling apart; no doubt after years of Kasper’s repeated slamming.

“Seth left the drum set in the space while I was living there and I just decided to make an album out of little-kid-drum-set-crap-songs,” Heroux says. Already, the framework for Hooray For Earth was being laid.

The two debuted the songs one night at a “drunken champagne apartment party” in Allston. Armed with a bass and their makeshift drum set, the songs ran from a minute to a minute and a half long. Before long, the two, alongside Principe, who had played in bands with Heroux since high school, realized they could do more with the songs.

“I wanted to fucking put the nail in the coffin of Raymond,” Heroux says, “So Hooray For Earth killed Raymond.”

Cellphone and Beyond

The transition came easy. With a crop of songs already written, all that was left was for the band to see Heroux’s vision through.

“In a lot of ways, we’re just covering Noel’s demos,” Benacquista says, who joined the band in 2004 to play keyboard. It was those demos — tracks like “Carefree” and “Oh No” — that became the basis for Hooray For Earth’s first record, an eponymous opus of gritty, up-tempo electro-rock songs they self-released in 2006. The record became universally regarded as one of the city’s strongest debuts that year and wound up on several local year-end lists.

Marked by two sold-out CD release shows at the Middle East Upstairs and two back-to-back SXSW appearances, Hooray For Earth was on an upswing that they’ve ridden into 2008.

This year brings us Cellphone, a grungy six-song mélange that continues to further define the band. The four-piece found the

EP, clocking in at just over half an hour, to be their next logical step.

“We felt like we were waiting for the right time to do the next album and that time never came,” Heroux says.

The plan to release an EP didn’t enter the band’s mind until Alex Maniatis from Dopamine Records (Caspian, Eyes Like Knives) approached them. Maniatis expressed interest in putting out the band’s material.

With that renewed sense of motivation and, as always, Heroux’s direction, the band’s aim for the new EP was for it to breathe more than its predecessor. Their first record was filled with what Heroux called “brain-busters” - loud songs that relied on fast explosions of energy. With the exception of “Ellie Mae,” the second song on Cellphone, this record is a little more easy-going, according to Heroux.
Take lead single “Warm Out” for example. One of Heroux’s five-year-old demos, the song is based around a lumbering guitar riff that gives way to a memorable chorus. Accented by shimmering synths and a well-executed guitar wail, at a brief three minutes, the song is a slickly produced hit in the making.

Where Hooray For Earth may have fallen short with consistency, the cohesive Cellphone excels. On the first record, drums were cut at three different studios and songs mixed at different places. On Cellphone, drums were all recorded at one place and mixed in one place (by The Everyday Visuals’ Chris Zembower). When it came to mastering, the quartet turned to Seattle’s Boston-transplant Brian Brown (Pilot to Gunner, Juliana Hatfield), the same man responsible for their full-length.
“Our friend had all these Jet Blue miles and it wound up being exactly the right amount we needed,” Heroux says of the mastering process, “So I flew out there for a week.”

The band’s sound, as listeners may notice, is more realized on this EP. Songs like “Friend” and especially “Cellphone,” where a series of sequenced beeps form a melody, spring alive with the warm glow of electronics. Benacquista admits Hooray For Earth’s earlier output was more guitar-dominated but it should come as no surprise that Heroux is eager to talk about the band’s electronic sound. Largely based on his own changing musical tastes, Heroux has been flirting with electronics while losing interest guitar heroics.

“I grew up listening to guitar gods and soloing and shit but I barely use chords anymore.” Heroux played around with his girlfriend’s analog keyboard and looped organ samples to come up with new ways to mix up songs.

“I think the whole thing sounds a little more electronic even though there aren’t a whole lot more of electronic elements, per se,” Heroux says.

While electronic aspects may be more noticeable, the band still retains their signature low-end guitars. Claiming his choice in guitar tuning isn’t meant to be a gimmick, Heroux says the low-end guitar sounds are just a technique he uses to give his music an “awesome garbage sound.”

“All the songs just happen to be in the right key... and if the right key happens to be drop fucking A-flat then that’s just what it’s going to be,” Heroux says.
While Heroux may toil for hours over a mixer and twiddle knobs, you won’t find him tracking multiple versions of songs of songs anytime soon.

Heroux steers his band’s proverbial ship but admits he isn’t a compulsive perfectionist. Most of Cellphone was culled from scratched tracks that Heroux pieced together. In fact, “Cellphone” and the record’s last track “Videostore” weren’t even fully visualized songs. The songs, which bookend the EP, are segments from other tracks that Heroux combined nearly two weeks before the record was due.
“Noel doesn’t like different versions of the same song, no multiple takes,” jokes Principe, “we can’t be like ‘Oh do you like mix two better?’ There’s always just one take. Just pick one.”

No Socks On
In the middle of describing his recording habits, Heroux busies himself with tucking his jeans into his boots. As he reaches down to one of them, it slips off, clunking to the ground, to reveal his bare foot.
“It’s a no-sock day,” Heroux says, laughing.
In a way, it’s an accurate representation of the band. Life seemingly always imitates art. Living in his practice space, sacrificing communication, light and often socks, he’s able to piece together his efforts, staying true to his dream. Heroux’s songs, it seems, are just as scrapped together as his living arrangements may be. In the end, regardless of planning and thanks to Heroux’s fractured talent, the band keeps churning out songs that stand up on their own, even if there are held together by a bit of duct tape and beat-up hardware.

www.hoorayforearth.com