“This is where the stars come crashing down,” Matt Hebert sings in a raspy voice (like The Frames’ Glen Hansard or The Dears’ Murray Lightburn) on Haunt’s first track “The Sea and The Soul.” And just as he does, it’s not the stars that come crashing, but the explosive guitars. For years, Hebert has led the alt. country outfit Ware River Club, a band more aligned with Uncle Tupelo than 90’s alt rock, but on his second album as Haunt, Hebert positions his music somewhere between the fuzz of Bob Mould and the pop of Matthew Sweet. Without doubt, multi-instrumentalist Jose Ayerve of Spouse has a lot of input on this CD, helping keep things simple but adding a rattle and hum to the music that dirties it up a bit more than Hebert’s previous work.
ife Samantha and I will be relocating to Vancouver BC for a year for her work. I’ll be heading West just after the 1st of May. In the next few weeks I’ll be trying to wrap up several projects.
My wife Samantha left for a few weeks to do some work in Tampa Bay. My friend Mike Wyzik (Ghosts of Blake, Storm the Ohio, Red Door Exchange) and I came up with an idea to write and record a record while she’s away. We decideed not to talk about it until she was gone. No ideas, no plan. All we had was the name Scary Beard. The day Sam left Mike found a used digital 8 track for $150. We set up a Roland 707 drum machine a Korg synth and filled the dining room with guitars and pedals. We wrote and recorded 11 songs in 8 days. We had some lyric writing sessions with a few special guests and will most likely be done recording on schedule. We’re going to put similar restrictions on the mix. Whoever does it gets one day.
