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New Release: The Hounds Below “You Light Me Up In The Dark”
I woke up this morning to a grim, gray day. I lay in bed for an hour, listening to this album once again,and staring at the sky outside the cheap white curtains of my bedroom. That is to say that the music matched the day. Or the day matched the music. In any case, it made the entirely ordinary experience of my daily life appear to me to be like something out of an indie movie shot by some hand held camera.
The Hounds Below hail from Detroit, Michigan and are fronted by former Von Bondies lead singer, Jason Stollsteimer. Stollsteimer also serves as the main songwriter for the band. Those of you familiar with his previous project will surely note a similar musical ethos on The Hounds Below’s first album, You Light Me Up In The Dark. It is an album that is staunchly positioned in the genre of indie-pop. Emotional without being emo, melodic without being sacchrine, The Hounds Below combine steel-tones and post-punk with warbling vocals.
So I woke up this morning without realizing I had a broken heart, that my lover had left me, that the world was coming to end, or that it was eternally gray outside. All of which are total fictions. But then I listened to this album. And these things seemed like they could be true. And it was like I was in a movie of my own melancholy. And I thought, “If this was the last scene I’d be saying goodbye to some boy at a train station as he left me forever.”
Are you looking for something to play as you run through the rain-wet streets of an ubran landscape looking for the girl you loved and lost? Are you looking for a song to sing as you stare broodingly out of your office window? Do you need a soundtrack to your own heartache? Even if you actually aren’t heartbroken?
Listen to “Conversations,” a song all about the failure to communicate properly. You should play it after a fight with your boyfriend. “Soaked In Gold” is the song you should play on the train platform as you are running after some beloved person who is leaving you forever, Casablanca style. The train is slowly pulling out of the station. You just might catch it. Each song on here is like an image from some movie you can’t remember. Each song is a picture out of some quiet, shoe-gazing cinema verite.
Honestly, the more I listen to this album, the more I like it. In truth, it isn’t doing anything new or truly original. But who cares? Originality is a lie invented by Ezra Pound. Sometimes all you want is a song that makes you feel like you are in a montage of your own stupid day.