Video: Hallelujah The Hills – “Superglued To You”

Directed by Ryan H. Walsh. Single out now.

An exciting week for Hills fans! On Monday I received my long-awaited copy of I’m You on vinyl and then today we get a brand new song and video. Not only that, but hints that a bigger project may be on its way.

“So, what’s this song for? What’s it’s a part of? We’re not ready to say quite yet, but we will later this summer, and at that point we’ll show you exactly which cards are up our sleeves and reveal our hand.”

Is this going to be the official follow-up to I’m You, or something else? We’ll see. Until then, we’ll be playing this new song on repeat.

How long has it been now?
It feels like maybe two years
You could tell me ten and I wouldn’t even blink an eye.

That’s the set up. It’s about two people bumping into each other for the first time in a while, but of course it’s about much more than that. Covid has warped our continuum and rendered the measure of time irrelevant if not impossible. So it goes. The rest of the song tells the story of the doomed romance with the stop-action video fleshing out some of the details. It’s weird that little plastic figurines can elicit genuine emotion but that’s filmmaking for you I guess!

PS – The I’m You double-LP is a beautiful object and it sounds great. Definitely worth seeking out. Looks like there are still some available via Bandcamp right now.

Video: Hallelujah The Hills – “The Memory Tree”

Directed by Ryan H. Walsh. From I’m You, out now on Discrete Pageantry.

It’s been almost a year since Hallelujah The Hills released I’m You. And what a year it’s been, right? It’s hard to remember that the first couple months of 2020 were relatively normalish.

It’s hard to remember anything these days.

I know folks had big plans for their downtime during this pandemic when responsible people were encouraged to stay at home as much as possible. Personally, I didn’t accomplish anything. But the guys in Hallelujah the Hills have been super productive.

Not only did they write and record a brand new song in a single day last month, but Ryan Walsh has also been working on a stop-motion animation video for album closer, “The Memory Tree.”

In the video a lonely little ghost has been too scared to leave his house for a full year until he’s finally inspired to go out and answer his call to adventure. The storyline reflects the themes of the album; my favorite detail is when our hero is a watching a music video on his little tv and asks himself, “Whoa, are they singing…to…me?” Don’t freak out, but yes they are.

Can you make a memory?
Without chopping down the memory tree?

Memories, dreams, ghosts, hauntings. What is a ghost other than a vivid memory or a lucid dream?

Can you do anything interesting without risking your life? Maybe not this year.

In a few years what are we going to remember about 2020? Anything at all? Maybe that’s a good thing. If we’re alive and trying to remember something, I guess that means we made it through.

Continue reading New Hallelujah The Hills video: The Memory Tree →

Video: Hallelujah the Hills – “People Keep Dying (And No One Can Stop It)”

From I’m You, out now on Discrete Pageantry.

I wish the songs I love would stop being so goddamn appropriate to our current situation but so it goes. Welcome to 2020. Pour yourself a stiff one.

Many years ago for our honeymoon my wife and I went to Italy and visited the Capuchin Crypt in Rome. It contains the artfully arranged bones of 3,700 dead monks. The idea, apparently, is to remind us of our mortality. My favorite section contains a clock made out of arm bones with an inscription that translates to: What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you soon shall be.

Yep. Might sound glib but it’s true. Give or take 50 or 60 years, which is just a meaningless blip in the universe, our time will come. Can you take this fact and artfully arrange it? Hallelujah the Hills does.

Ryan Walsh says, “It’s a heavy song from a heavy album, and people have been asking about or pointing to this particular song frequently as things are getting worse and worse with COVID-19 in the U.S.A. The truth is, this song is about the baseline human condition that we’re all gonna die. Sadly in this current situation, we actually could’ve stopped some of these deaths if we had an inkling of competent leadership in the country. But this song was always about confronting that terrifying aspect of life as a way of realizing how special every single day is. It’s really hard to do right now, so, personally, focusing on creative things, like making video art with your friends, is a decent way to try to stay sane.”

Staying sane is key. Don’t freak out.

We’re all gonna die. Sic semper erat, et sic semper erit.

Hallelujah the Hills: web, twitter, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

Video: Hallelujah The Hills – “It Still Floors Me”

From I’m You, out now on Discrete Pageantry.

With its prominent flute and plucked viola, “It Still Floors Me” is a highlight of Hallelujah The Hills’ I’m You. Of all the tracks on the album, this is the one that most explicitly references frontman Ryan Walsh’s not-so-secret identity as an expert on Van Morrison’s 1968 classic Astral Weeks.

It doesn’t hurt that the guy playing the flute and soprano sax on “It Still Floors Me” is John Payne, the same guy who played those instruments on Astral Weeks. So the similarity in vibe is clearly intentional. There is a swath of pure beauty and mystical awe that cuts right through the heart of the work. *

That idea of “mystical awe” is the theme of Walsh’s song. What is it that still has the power to move us in this era of science, technology, and access to all of the world’s information? That question remains unanswered. “When you solve the mystery you become one yourself.” Is that why we makes gurus out of anybody who convinces us they know the way?

It’s astonishing to realize that even the most impressive art and literature and philosophy throughout history wasn’t beamed down to earth by gods but created by mere mortals like me and you. “Confused by classics, mistaken for miracles.” Who are these people who write The Illiad, or paint the Sistine Chapel, or come up with the guitar solo in “Louie Louie”? It seems miraculous, but it’s not. It’s entirely human. And that’s mind-boggling. Overwhelming, really.

Hallelujah the Hills: web, twitter, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

* Yeah, I confess I totally stole that line from Lester Bangs. You got me.

Continue reading New Hallelujah The Hills video: It Still Floors Me →

Video: Hallelujah The Hills – “Running Hot With Fate”

Directed by Tyler Hollis Derryberry. From I’m You, out now on Discrete Pageantry.

“I’m fine. But I’m not okay.” That’s pretty much how everybody I know is feeling these days. So it’s kind of comforting, I guess, to be reminded that we can get through it: “If you think you’re at your limit just remember what some folks survive.”

“Running Hot With Fate” recounts the abbreviated stories of ten characters (“The stories are all real, but the names have been changed,” Ryan Walsh tweeted. “Except for 2 of the names. 2 names have not been changed.”). These are Hemingway bet-worthy short shorts (“Alice wasn’t kidding when she said she saw a UFO / Elliot was ripping up his letters out in the snow”) that reveal that we’re all going through our own stuff.

The triumphant payoff comes in the bridge:

Can you carve a new world from some old clay?
I keep waking up surprised I get another day
Is this free will or is it destiny?
It doesn’t matter who the fuck’s in charge of me

The video features 27 Boston musicians (Tanya Donelly, Ezra Furman, Marissa Nadler, Mission of Burma’s Clint Conley, Galaxie 500’s Naomi Yang, et al.) doing Andy Warhol-style screen tests.

There’s everyone from a performer who stood on stage the first night the Boston Tea Party opened in 1967, to young musicians just getting their start. In fact, the young boy who appears at the beginning of the video doesn’t have a band yet, but has plans to start one called Mollusk, or maybe Kursed. All participants were filmed in total silence for three minutes; they were asked to interact with the camera with their eyes, to have a conversation without words.

You can watch the original, uncut screen tests up on the video’s mini-site.

Director Tyler Hollis Derryberry says, “Maybe our friends are amazing actors, or really good at being emotionally raw on command, or maybe it’s just the Kuleshov-effect, but staring into another human being’s eyes while Ryan sings about searching for strength in other people’s stories turned out to be more moving than Ryan or I could have imagined.”

Yep.

Hallelujah the Hills: web, twitter, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.