New Music From Hanz, The Yearning
Hanz
Plasty II
(Tri Angle)
The latest vinyl and digital release Plasty II from Hanz, the musical outlet of recording artist Brandon Juhans of Durham, N.C., is a genre-smashing exercise full of twists that perhaps conveys being in a video-game-world earthquake.
Imagine the ground buckling and opening up, making it difficult to stand, as splintered pieces of billboards—showing bits of text and pictures—fly through the air and embed themselves into the ground.
A pithy yet inadequate description might be glitchy electronic hip-hop, but that doesn’t speak to how free-form and shapeless the proceedings can sometimes be, with listeners often left bewildered and guessing.
“Number One Stain” opens Plasty II with irregular beats that churn tensely and reverberate dramatically; film noir strings swirl uncomfortably among spoken snippets, making a puzzling track that ends without answers.
“The Approach” has an aggressive attitude with a barrage of stuttering beat samples, while “Psychic Dog” offers a different, less confrontational vibe with soul synth chords unfurling on drum machine sounds, as hisses echo artificially.
“Fifty Yard Stare” continues the confusing nature of Plasty II, with disembodied vocal snippets and keyboard splashes, with the occasional chugging rock guitar to chop up the track’s flow.
Very gradually, Plasty II leans toward instrumental hip-hop territory, which is most apparent on “Three Min Surgery”; it’s a blast-up of randomness tied down with a hip-hop beat loop, with ghostly sounds, glitchy digital recording artifacts and short yet deeply felt aural slivers like a harp run.
Finally, the release ends with “Clutched,” which pushes a wedge to highlight the duality between abrupt, sharp sounds and more abstract backgrounds, as breakbeats are stretched and manipulated; it closes a winding, tricky release with no obvious paths or safety nets for the listener as it meanders through its blurry, genre-defying, thorny pathway.
The Yearning
Take Me All over the World
(Elefant)
Multi-instrumentalist and producer Joe Moore seems to have been born 50 years too late, with an unabashed devotion to certain strains of pop music from the ‘60s. On earlier releases, his trio The Yearning channeled ‘60s girl-group pop, but in the last few years, the group has been outwardly expanding its expressed influences, which still mostly happen to be from the ‘60s.
The band’s latest release, a mini-album entitled Take Me All over the World released digitally and on vinyl, sports a few Brazilian flavors and beats, evoking samba and bossa nova and bringing to mind the breezy, effortless charm of Astrud Gilberto.
The Yearning’s current line-up is a trio with lead vocalist Maddie Dobie and guitarist Mark Kiff joining Moore, who wrote, arranged, recorded and produced all of the album’s songs.
The opening track “How Do You Make Somebody Fall in Love?” is lithe, gentle and balanced, with nylon-string guitar parts, synthetic flute and string flourishes and a wide-eyed purity; the direction changes pointedly for the next tune, “Do You Remember?” with a samba flair and dance tempo while remaining poised, pushing the nostalgia past the ‘60s into the late ‘70s.
One of the release’s highlights is the escapist “Airplane (Fly Me to Mexico),” an ambling bossa nova tune with an irresistible chorus melody that is so damn cute that one feels slightly guilty listening to it, delivered by Dobie with her pretty and spotless voice; among its glistening and sparkling moments is a quick diversion into lounge jazz territory before settling back into Stan Getz-esque bossa nova.
The elegant waltz-time “Learn to Love” has an air of mystery with dreamy windchimes, intriguing harpsichord patterns and strings, and Dobie finds herself dueting with Moore in a sort of Lee Hazlewood/Nancy Sinatra style.
Some aspects of The Yearning could rightfully be called precious or even cheesy, but they certainly deliver pure pop delights with bright and clean melodies and tight and vibrant arrangements.