Hopewell has been doing the psych-rock thing for a decade now, hailing from Brooklyn they’ll be swinging by DC9 this Sunday (with the also excellent Working For A Nuclear Free City) on the way to SXSW.  Frontman Jason Russo (formerly of Mercury Rev) sent us over a few mp3’s with commentary from himself and bandmate Lyndon Roeller, and he even included some visual aides.  Enjoy the tunes and check them out this weekend: 

DC9
Sun, Mar 09
Working For A Nuclear Free City
Hopewell
Doors @ 830pm
Show @ 9pm
$ 10

Jason Russo - This song is new. So new that this is the demo. We rehearsed it for the first time last night. It’s made up of previous Hopewell songs all stitched together with me howling over it. There are drum beats from our song “Calcutta” recorded at Tarbox Road Studios in 2005, saxophones done in our living room, and bird noises from upstate NY. It’s based on a movie by Herzog. It’s a metaphor. It’s not as pretentious as it sounds, believe me.

Lyndon Roeller - It’s a new medium we’ve been exploring, I suppose you could call it song collage. I also think it’s a bit in line with the experimental writing technique of cut-up theory. When you have several hundred gigabits of Hopewell source material spanning 3 albums, it’s tough not to plunder the stacks in search of The Third Mind. Plus there’s the added bonus of cinematic/musical cross pollination. The proverbial icing on the cake.

Jason Russo - This is one of the songs from our Peel Session. We have included it because, well, it’s a fucking Peel Session! We are still amazed that we got to do one. It was at the BBC and it felt like we were the Beatles. That’s my brother on distorted piano and Dalia Garih on drums. I think this happened in 2001. Much has changed in the world since.

Lyndon Roeller - I always wanted to do a Peel session. So many of my favorite recordings by bands where at the BBC and involved John Peel. When I found the Gang of Four Peels Sessions disc at the WFMU Record Fair here in New York City, it literally changed my life. Unfortunately, I wasn’t involved in this session I joined the band right after, but at least I’m in a band that was fortunate to do one before his Peel’s untimely demise. The song In The Small Places was always a favorite early Hopewell song of mine and this version seems particularly vicious and aggressive compared to the original which appears on the out-of-print The Curved Glass. Reminds me of being young growing up in Upstate New York, playing local shows with no regard for what was happening in the rest of the music world or the trends coming from The City. Just playing music to make a glorious noise.

Download mp3

Lyndon Roeller - This song has been a staple of Hopewell’s live set. Although in this next incarnation and upcoming SXSW tour I think it’s been pushed out momentarily to make room for new blood. One of the first guitar tracks I recorded after I joined the band. I had just learned the song and kind of winged it with my $200 Epiphone guitar through our producer’s Fender Twin. I still love the sound we got. Really only the sound you can get from a Twin when it’s turned up all the way. We also overdubed whistling in the pre-choruses. If you listen close you can hear it. I found out that day that it’s really hard to whistle in key. For me the gender ambiguity and borderline absurdist lyrics, yet down-to-earth quality of the whole made this Hopewell’s flagship song for a time. There’s a live performance of us doing it for a Vice show called Soundcheck at Southpaw on VBS.TV. There’s also a great T-Rex song called Monolith. Perhaps it was an unconscious homage.

Jason Russo - This is the closet thing we have to a single from the last record. This is a love song. A modern one. It is not a sexual metaphor. O wait, yes it is.

Bunch more downloads on their site:
http://hopewell.tv
http://myspace.com/hopewell
http://teepeerecords.com

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