Some music, the best music, certainly, comes close to the act of time travel. Play a record, and sometimes something jumps out at you, unexpectedly transporting you back to a time and a place – the sonic equivalent of discovering a box of old photographs, memory-jogging and nostalgic.
As ‘Sunset’ kicks off this new three-track EP from Hollow Star, I suddenly find myself elsewhere, an eighteen-year-old kid in a sea of black-clad denizens of a basement club as post-punk comes into its own. It’s that gorgeous, high-end bass line, those scathing guitars, that world-weary vocal, the groove, the grit, the grace; familiar faces flash by; the smell of sweat and beer and dry ice and patchouli hangs in the smoky air …see, time travel.
‘Running’ is a more brooding, skittering, and sonically scarred ebb and flow of intimacy and intensity, a whisper-in-the-ear vocal as incendiary sonics explode all around, and ‘Fall’ perfectly captures that funk-punk-junk, alternative, and angular, soul-soaked sonic experimentation that bands like The Pop Group turned the tables on punk with.
But this is not just a chance to soak up past glories; this is no mere pastiche. Dream might look to the past, but it is more about continuing the story than it is about retelling it.
These three songs are the best of all worlds: a flashback to our formative days (if you are of a certain age, at least), and music that feels fresh, fun, and totally in step with today’s tastes and zeitgeist- sonically smart, lyrically relatable, a move forward, a glance back. Everything is cyclical, so let’s embrace the echo of post-punk as it returns to the modern world. You have made an old man very happy!
