‘The Hugs’ latest effort Again and Again is a chronology of a band who have sailed the rough seas of the contemporary music industry and have returned to land with staunch and bite. Following an unsuccessful jaunt with London’s 1965 Records, the LP was recorded at neighbourhood basement studio Klickitat Band Camp in their hometown of Portland, and it seeps with unexpected experience and maturity. Without shedding their jovial Brit-poppy swathe Oregonian four-piece have developed a delicate melancholy edge. Under the umbrella of everyday life, the band explore the nuances of love over time and the dubious relationship between dreams and reality.
“It’s part fuck-you to the man, but also about growing older and realizing things,” explains front-man Danny Delegato.
In the midst of the global economic crisis a year ago The Hugs found themselves recording a debut album at possibly the worst time. The boys were soldiering through the final stages of recording their debut LP (which they ultimately self-released). At night, they would return to their decrepit East London flat where they would huddle around cheap halogen heaters in the living room. One of the bedrooms had been lost to toxic mould which crept up the walls and eclipsed the ceiling, and so Kelly, Nicholas and Brendan claimed various territories of the beer bottle-strewn living room to sleep in, while Danny snatched the remaining bedroom. Behold, the glitz and glamour of life under a major record label.
Like their London flat, The Hugs felt their band’s integrity had been allowed to decay, and they’d been forced into some rancid, undesirable place. On the surface, they were in good hands. Columbia had hooked them up with the Grammy award winning Liam Watson, whose efforts with The White Stipes’ “Elephant” had put his name in lights. But their paths were not aligned. Liam was commissioned to satisfy the expectations of those higher up in the Columbia pyramid, and it seemed the rough-around-the-edges Hugs banter translated to risk for industry heavyweights.
“We simply did not project what they thought would make them lots of money,” admitted frontman Danny Delegato.
Clean, polished radio-ready hits were on the set-menu. Goodbye playful Danny Delegato yelps. Erase that Stephen Malkmus-esq lofi guitar dribble. And put a cap on those pounding Kelly McKenzie drum crescendos. Not Liam Watson’s Toe Rag studios. But let’s be frank, The Hugs are messy. They’re as much a garage band as a pop rock act. It’s the grit that gives them an edge, the animal element that is their soul. When Watson and Columbia removed that The Hugs were just another pop band, synthetic and sterilised. And the final product was inevitably bland; a skeleton of the band’s potential. The Hugs moved on.
Tired and crestfallen, The Hugs returned to their faithful Portland where they re-established ties with local producer Shay Scott at Klickitat Band Camp. With dozens of songs under their belt, the industrious band worked to compile a self-titled album of the lovesick high-school tunes that had intoxicated 1965 records in the first place. But they also found themselves contemplating new terrain, eager to vent their spleen and reflect on their ordeal.
What resulted was a naturally diverse album, generally nurtured in a pop-rock discipline but with sprouts of placid integrity. Splashes of sombre finger-picking evolve into springy headnod-worthy choruses. Kinksian pop-rock swagger is adorned with zesty four-part harmonies, while a murky contemplative undercurrent ebbs and flows.
“Dreams” seduces with cyclic guitar melodies and occasional bongo beats, calling on Revolver-era Beatles at their trippiest, before the reverb kicks in and Delegato lets rip with the fiery warning ‘get out of my dreams’ augmented by grungy Vines-like chorus harmonies. With startling brilliance, drummer Kelly McKenzie puts his song-writing cap on in the reflective ballad “Years Have Shown”, an earthy track with an intoxicating verse hook and scintillating harmony crescendos. With chilling awareness McKenzie muses ‘the ship is moving too fast, my feet are tripping up/ I need to be smarter, before I’m out of luck’ – a snapshot of a young band pining for a grip in the music industry.
But The Hugs don’t stray too far from their more renowned frivolous side. The raucous “Go Wild” takes you through an explosive party bender – a pending crowd-favorite for sure. Funky “Never Gonna Live, Never Going To Die” fluctuates between a seductive disco rhythm and a grungy build up before reaching a somewhat manic tipping-point (“this…may…be…the…last…day”).
“Again & Again” is fittingly diverse – wild, giddy, faint and reflective – such has been the nature of their recent lives. At times it’s a party – they swagger and they shout – and at times shit goes down and they scratch their heads and wonder.
By: David Elliot-Jones
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