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In his head, Hooray for Earth bassist Chris Principe has it all planned out: a communal musical celebration, a spontaneous and deserved showcasing of true ability.
“It’s like Block Party,” suggests Principe. “It’s basically Dave Chappelle and his friends and it’s so amazing. It’s Mos Def, Common, Talib Kweli and it’s like ‘Alright, we’ll put on a show, come on guys.’ That’s what I want it to be.”
While he agrees that the metaphor extends slightly beyond the scope of the band, it nevertheless has a tangible footing throughout the Northeast. Instead of hip-hop icons, however, names like Zambri, Unbusted, Porsches on the Autobahn, Paul Holmes, and Explody<3 receive mention with consistent frequency. Between Boston and New York, a firm cadre has formed, one founded on youth, run on inspiration and bolstered by uninhibited talent.
Hooray For Earth has locked on to this cooperative grid, a symbiotic “artist buddy-buddy system” as Principe simply puts it. And it is a completely selfless process, brought about purely by an obsession to both achieve and witness achievement. “We all want to help each other, we all wanna tour together, we wanna tell everybody about each other,” adds synth and guitar player Gary Benacquista. “It’s really cool to see a community rise up a little bit. I’d love to rise as a group,” offers Principe. “There’s that support system, but it’s also nice to see your friends succeed and see something that you believe in do well.” In this spirit, Hooray For Earth received a helpful tug towards the spotlight from a Boston band that is intimately familiar with the city’s musical makeup, having almost singlehandedly given rise to it. In July, Mission of Burma, having heard the group’s debut album, invited the quartet to open the second date of their national tour, a bursting-at-the-seams homecoming gig at the Paradise. Clearly, the buddy system has its strengths.
When prompted for their reaction to the level of success implicit in sharing a bill with a band of national stature, the answers are understandably short and blunt: “At this point, it’s like — finally,” notes lead singer and guitarist Noel Heroux, followed by Principe’s “For me, it’s ‘Let’s get going.’” The band has no desire to rest on its heels now, having recently completed its self-titled debut, a work certainly worthy of the hours and resources consumed at its expense. “We need to be out there playing, especially nowadays,” acknowledges Benacquista, underlining the preciousness of time. “The traditional root of getting signed, getting on a label, being promoted, put out there, getting on the radio and all that crap, it doesn’t really work anymore. It’s all about internet and touring.” Hooray For Earth displays an uncanny sense of opportunism, a trait that seems to extend back to its earliest groundings when Heroux began developing, in his own unique way, the sound that now defines the group.
“Hooray for Earth was a side project,” explains Heroux. “It was a pretend band that I had that was just me and then a year before we became Hooray for Earth me and Seth (the group’s drummer) were playing shows with him playing drums on a little kid’s drum set and me playing bass. We just made up songs on the spot and that was Hooray for Earth.” Despite the seemingly unprofessional exterior of these initial performances and their subsequent recordings, the band recognized a musical foundation for something much greater. “We all had this blueprint for the band we are now because Noel recorded a mini album with the name Hooray For Earth with, like, ten songs. And they all had the little kid’s drum kit and just the nastiest sounding shit you’ve ever heard,” Principe notes, then adding the kicker: “It was disgusting, but at the same time it was really beautiful and unique.” Herein lies the trade secret, the formula for distinction, within Hooray For Earth’s mutual artist society — embrace that which makes you singular. And when you come across four guys as obsessively passionate as Hooray For Earth, you don’t hear the nastiest sounding shit; you hear musicianship at its highest level. You hear a raucous, penetrating sound that is simultaneously tight and controlled. Heroux shares a similar opinion of those within the buddy system: “All these people are so good and it’s so ridiculous that like we all know each other. Everybody is gonna be able to do something really good.”
Perhaps the situation that has required the most opportunism from the bandmembers at this point was recording their debut album. Over the span of two years, the desire to give tangibility to their compositions clashed with the limits imposed by money, time, and even geography. “We wanna make a record, Noel has tons of songs we wanna record, but we have no money,” explains Principe. The recording process advanced at the same pace as funds became available — intermittently, only allowing the band to get “some of the basic shit for the songs laid down,” as Heroux describes. Still, even after all the effort involved in completing the initial album, the group looked to strive further. “We recorded the album once and we had ten songs and I was like ‘We can’t do ten songs,’” Heroux states. “‘We have to have more.’” Recruiting longtime Boston-based producer Brian Brown, the group spent another year remixing, rerecording, and, after Brown relocated to Seattle, flying across the country to complete songs. Heroux, however, earns producer status for the album, as he admits, “Two thirds of the album was recorded at the practice space on my shit computer.” He continues, “There’s no frustration there ... I’m just like ‘Guys, I did this’ and they’re like ‘Alright, good.’” Like recording, Heroux’s approach to the songwriting process is equally straightforward and simplistic: “Just kinda like ‘Well, I got one,’” he suggests. And, true to the band’s nature, Heroux is already looking forward to beginning the next album.
In September, Hooray For Earth mobilized its support system for a two-night stand at the Middle East Upstairs in Cambridge to celebrate the release of their debut album. Along with the usual names in tow, the band bolstered their numbers with the addition of Appomatox, Township, and The Everyday Visuals for the first night. This group of young performers, it seems, is no longer an underground cooperative, but rather the face of the newest music movement in Boston. While the first night was meant to draw a more diverse crowd, the second night, comprised mostly of B-sides, was intended to provide the band’s loyal following with a taste of, in Benacquista’s words, “Whoa, what the fuck is that?”
A similar reaction would certainly be welcomed from the more influential decision makers as well, says the band. The album is currently being shopped around among record labels and, with their ever-expanding string of success, the group hopes that the next step will be a permanent one. “As time goes on and we see more and more stuff happen for us, it kinda makes us feel like we’re not wasting our time; it’s not all for naught,” remarks Principe. “We actually have the potential to do all the things we want to do — make a living playing music.”
Living to play music, however, would have been an accurate description of Hooray For Earth on that night in July, face to face with a crowd of seasoned loyalists and eager newcomers. Propelled by Seth Kasper, whose explosively manic demeanor behind the drum kit singles him out as one of the most gifted percussion talents in town, the band delves into a darkly melodic combination of guitar and synthesizer elements. Kasper’s playing style might derive from the utter enjoyment he experiences as part of Hooray For Earth. “The thing that’s always in my mind since the first time I heard their demo, I was like ‘Man, this is my favorite band and I’m so glad it exists and I’m so fucking amazed that I’m in it,’” exclaims Kasper. Principe echoes his bandmate’s comments, admitting he’s “just a huge fan first of all.”
Perhaps true success will find Hooray For Earth once their fans can match the intense level of passion the band associates with its own music. But, as Heroux mentions, the band is also perfectly happy with a fraction of this enthusiasm: “Anybody appreciating [our music] even half as much as I do, I’m fucking psyched about it.”