Robert Bieselin of the Bergen County Record recently joined us for a band practice and we had a chance to talk to him about life, music and New Jersey. You can check out the full article in tomorrow's edition of the Bergen County Record.
Holler Makes Itself Heard
by Robert Bieselin, Staff Writer Herald News
http://www.northjersey.com/entertainment/music/35453489.html?page=allThe five principal members of Holler, Wild Rose! were jamming in their Garfield rehearsal space when I came tripping up the stairs to the claustrophobic loft. They hardly noticed I was there.
Drummer Ryan Smyth nodded indifferently afterward, hidden behind dark shades and a wool scarf. John Mosloskie, the band's lead singer, wore a vest with nothing underneath and red marker streaks below his left eye. Scott Vangenderen didn't look up from his bass, and guitarists Lou D'Elia — buried behind a pink scarf, sunglasses, a skullcap and a guitar — and Ryan Cheresnick maintained their hipster rocker pose as well, too cool for the reporter in their midst.
It was an awkward few minutes — then they all lost it. Laughing, they removed their scarves and glasses.
"We wanted to see the look on your face," Mosloskie explained.
"We were going to put a mirror with dollars and coke on it," joked D'Elia, before the band jammed on some of their real songs.
The dense sound of Holler, Wild Rose! started, of all places, in a huge warehouse-type enclosure in the Bunker Hill section of Paterson, where Mosloskie's father owns an industrial cleaning business. There, in a massive garage for street cleaners, the childhood friends assembled a makeshift rehearsal space.
"It was this really long airplane hangar-like building," said Mosloskie, formerly of Paterson and now a Garfield resident. "We already liked spacey atmospheric songs, but the room just added to that. When you played guitar, it just filled the room."
Also filling the room was an omnipresent field of blue smoke, soot and noise let off by street sweepers as they idled. It was the perfect environment for Holler.
Five years later, they've left that rehearsal space but retained the dense, gritty sound it lent them. Now the "wall of sound" music comes on more like a wave, undulating and crashing with lush leagues of guitar, keys, drums and bass that swell in the salty mix, as Mosloskie's vocals sink into the fluidity, popping and stretching like an elastic band. The sound has been compared to Sigur Rós, Radiohead and My Bloody Valentine — and Holler's seven members welcome the comparisons.
"When we see them, we laugh, smile, make fun of them or accept it and like it," said Smyth. At the end of the day, though, they prefer their own music.
"I see the sound as groove with atmosphere," said Cheresnick, calling it a combo of Earth, Wind & Fire, Motown and Sigur Rós.
If you add up every band that critics have linked to their music (Jeff Buckley, the Verve, David Bowie, Pink Floyd, early Genesis, Roxy Music, Ours, Yes etc.), you'll start to understand how complex the sound actually is — and how difficult it is to pinpoint. Nailing it down to a single genre is even more difficult.
"We've heard shoegaze, post-folk and Americana. What is Americana?" Mosloskie said.
"Someone called us part of the 'dark wave movement' in 2004," Smyth added, "but I think it stopped moving the day after we played that show. I guess it was a mini-movement … it moved up the street or something."
The guys, who are working on their second album for New Jersey-based Backlight Records, don't take themselves too seriously. They let the music do the serious work and just go along for the ride.
"They don't try to put on a show. They just make the music they feel so strongly about," said Peter Field, co-owner of Backlight Records. "What wins the crowd over is what happens within the band. It starts there and moves in concentric waves out from the stage until everyone feels like they're part of it."
http://www.northjersey.com/entertainment/music/35453489.html?page=all
