Friday 07.17.09: The Echo & Club Underground present THE HAPPY HOLLOWS / THE VALLEY ARENA @ echo

The Happy Hollows || Listen || Watch

“The Happy Hollows is, put simply, transformative. That is, the young Los Angeles trio’s infectious and amorphous sound is one that immediately sticks upon first listen, evoking hints of bands that listeners remember not for the scene that launched them nor the trends of the era, but for the moment at which they first heard its music. Vocalist/guitarist Sarah Negahdari wields ominous riffs and finger-tapped arpeggios with skill reminiscent of Mary Timony of Helium while simultaneously singing and wailing like a hyper hybrid of Debbie Harry, Kim Deal and Karen O. Meanwhile, the agile rhythm section of Charles Mahoney (bass/vocals) and Chris Hernandez (drums) vault and lunge with precision.

The Happy Hollows’ raucous and irreverent noisy-pop sound is influenced by genres as disparate as 90’s college rock, Broadway show-tunes, garage punk, and 80’s pop. The band combines innovative song structures, surreal lyrics, and fiercely adept instrumentation to recreate reality into a jagged panorama of vibrant, kaleidoscopic collage. Listening to their music, one cannot help but see visions of a place oddly askew from the world we experience everyday, a parallel universe that is at once whimsical, demented, and ferocious. Among other things, the subjects of their tunes include labyrinths, counterfactual history, palindromes, the colors of the rainbow, time travel, mythical animals, and Tarot cards. On the group’s 2008 EP, Imaginary, Negahdari’s cherubic propensity for quizzical, playful lyrics and signature finger-tapping/finger picking guitar technique are readily apparent as the band quirkily straddles the fence between dissonant rock and art-pop. – Radio Exile

With:
The Valley Arena || Listen

8:30pm / $5 if 21 or over, $7 if under / 18+