Interview: Hooray For Earth

In February next year, New York-via-Boston quartet Hooray For Earth splash down with a debut, True Loves, whose epic scale and ambition makes Sufjan Stevens look the proverbial slacker with a four-track and an acoustic guitar. Mixing wall-of-sound grandeur with melodies reminiscent, variously, of Hot Chip, MGMT, Depeche Mode and Sufjan Stevens (natch), it’s actually the culmination of a long and difficult journey for the band, whose beginnings can be traced back to a high school group formed by singer Noel Heroux and bassist Chris Principe in 1996. Hooray For Earth’s self-titled, self-released debut appeared a whole decade after that, but it was not until a move to the Big Apple brought about a sea change in Heroux’s previously cynical outlook on music that the band — in spite of the iffy name — became a serious proposition. An EP, ‘Momo’, met with wider acclaim in 2010, and with their debut proper for Memphis Industries set to put the band firmly on the map in 2012, we took Noel to one side to find out how he managed to turn things around. Nice chappy he was, too, if somewhat given to slightly gloomy asides on the human condition.

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You moved to New York around four years ago from Boston, what was the thinking behind that?

It was just a good move for me, we didn’t do stuff with the band for a couple of years after I moved, then we picked it up again and we were like, ‘OK, maybe we can do this’, it became a project I could take seriously. In Boston I had this bad attitude about various things, I didn’t like how I thought music worked, or ‘being in a band’ worked. But I mean, I wasn’t living in great conditions, and I had this fucked-up attitude. But when I came to New York I was living with my girlfriend and things cleared up really quickly for me, I just had a couple of years to chill and I think that made the difference.

What was it that was getting you down in Boston, more specifically?

When I was recording on my own I always had an urge to make everything sound as big as possible, but at the same time I didn’t have an internet connection, I didn’t go out and talk to people or read about music or do anything at all really, I was living in my own world trying to make this massive music but I wasn’t communicating with anyone outside of myself. I’d created this weird world for myself where I was making these giant recordings, then we’d go out and play a show and it was disappointing, I would be forced to realise I wasn’t living in this world.

It was craziness, I was super-delusional. But now I’m at the point now where it’s comfortable for me to play an average show with this band. I mean, of course you wanna play for more people, but I’m comfortable, I’m just happy to be doing it. But I haven’t lost that urge to make things really huge for people. I like music that makes me throw my fists up in the air and go ‘YAAARRGH!’

You described the record, I believe, as offering ‘elated beauty and crushing anxiety put to music’ — what makes you anxious, and why?

I’m just a very anxious person. I have a few very solid things in my life that hold me down, and those are the dearest things to me. But when I’m left to my own thoughts I can be very anxious. Just the way the world works is scary, you never know what a person is gonna do at any given time, and that’s something I think about a lot.

Are these thoughts born out of experience particularly?

It’s not anything big that’s happened to me, it’s just my general feeling. I think a lot of the things people are capable of or do on a daily basis are really beautiful, but also there’s just endless amounts of scary shit that people do regularly and it’s awful, which is shit that I think about. When I’m making music that’s not there, I’m totally inside my own head and concentrating on the mood of the melodic and harmonic movement. But when it comes to the lyrics the rest of my thoughts converge with all my excitement about how the music sounds to me. But the thing is I’m not at all intending to make people uncomfortable or anxious, in a way it’s like I’m putting these feelings to music in a way that’s comforting

‘No Love’

Looking at the name Hooray For Earth I thought you’d be some kind of terrible twee band (no offence!), what made you decide to call yourselves that?

The name started off as a joke, and unfortunately we never changed it so there it is. It guess it’s supposed to be celebratory but it’s a joke too, like ‘hooray for earth, we totally fucked it up!’.

How d’you think the new record marks a progression from the EP, ‘Momo’?

The EP was really important for me because I’d been recording on my own for a long time, but I wasn’t producing anything I was comfortable with attitude-wise. Then I did ‘Momo’ with my friend Josh, who took sort of a producer’s role — and it was a new experience to me, just very relaxed. And it was great going into this record ’cos I went back to working alone, but I definitely took some of that EP experience and opened up what I wanted to do on my own.

You covered Kanye’s ‘All Of The Lights’ quite recently, and obviously youre not shy of busting out the odd epic move in your own music — what would you do with a Kanye West kind of recording budget?

Well I don’t have any solid plans yet, but I do have a pretty good idea how the next record’s gonna go and I’m really psyched about it. But let’s say I had a crazy-ass Kanye budget for the record after that… I’ve got a shortlist of people I’d like to work with and whether it would make any sense or not I don’t know, but I’m a huge Arab Strap fan, I just fucking love that band. And on the other end of things I’m a huge Neil Hannon fan. I think that would be spectacular. I’d also really like to talk to Chris Cunningham about collaborating. Even if he told me to fuck off, that would be enough!

You also wrote some songs with Twin Shadow’s George Lewis Jr recently, what was that about?

Yeah, George and I have been friendly for a while, and right before his album came out and I went to make our record we had some free time together, so we did a couple songs. We only finished one, which is one I wrote,  but there’s also one he wrote which just barely didn’t get finished. Maybe if we pop back in the studio we could finish it, but he’s quite busy so I don’t know what’ll happen.

Do you feel like you had something interesting going there?

Yeah, at some point if we have time down the road well definitely do something together again.

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