Words by Brendan Sullivan

There’s a grungy underbelly to the psychedelic pop songs of The Black Hollies, but you’d never really guess it from listening to their pretty and soulful tunes, like “Can’t Stop These Tears (From Falling)” or “Patient Sparrow”. Those vocals and carefully-picked guitar melodies and washes of organ chords are oh-so-sweet, but they do pack a bigger punch than your standard bubble gum pop revival. Meanwhile, good fucking luck listening to the speedy and noisy garage-rock psychedelia on “Paisley Pattern Ground” and “(Baby) I’m Your Fool” without singing/shouting along and playing air drums/guitar. It makes sense, then, to learn that 3/4 of this band was 3/5 of New Jersey hardcore punk band Rye Coalition; yeah, that one, produced by Dave Grohl, opening for Foo Fighters, engineered by Steve Albini, all that shit. It’s still surprising to me to hear these songs and know their history, but after seeing them tear through a blistering set at Howlers a couple years ago (they played for like 40 minutes straight, no applause breaks) I can totally appreciate its influence on their current sound. Yeah, you need to see these guys live. Play some tunes below and read on to learn more about the band and how you can help bring them back to Pittsburgh (I hope!).

The Black Hollies / Paisley Pattern Ground
The Black Hollies / Patient Sparrow
The Black Hollies / Gloomy Monday Morning
The Black Hollies / No Need to Be Rude

The Black Hollies first started making music together under that name in late 2005, around the same time that Rye Coalition was engaged in a legal battle to get their album (eventually entitled Curses, after all the struggle with the record label) out of the hands of Interscope and out to the public. They got a dbeut record out shortly thereafter, Crimson Reflections, on Brooklyn’s Ernest Jenning label. It surely seems to be born from the minds of a bunch of punk-rockers, but maybe ones feeling some nostalgia for an era (the 1960s) that they missed out on and wanted to relive, albeit vicariously through some revival tunes. The album has some straight-up rockers, like “No Need To Be Rude” and “You’ve Been Gone Too Long”, but some flower-powery tinges creep in on more meandering numbers, like the this-has-to-be-about-an-acid-trip title of “Crimson Reflections Through Looking Glass Mind” and the extended guitar solo intro to closing track, “Eyes of Mermaide”. It’s worth noting here, in fact, that the band name is, I think, a perfect description for the rockin’ but druggy style of music featured on this debut: “black hollies” was a Jersey slang term for speed in the 60s and 70s.

Their second album, Casting Shadows, came two years later and saw them fleshing out the psychedelic soundscapes and letting the reverb on the guitars and vocals play a bigger role than before. Just hearing the fade out/fade in transition on the swirling guitars going from “Whispers Beneath The Willows” into “Paisley Pattern Ground” is enough to get me a little high. Seriously. (And be sure to check out the trippy throwback video for “Paisley Pattern Ground” below.) It also found them scaling back the punkiness on some songs, opting for soothing vocals atop raga-style guitars on “Patient Sparrow”, and, what the hell, they threw in a blues song in the form of “Running Through My Mind”, complete with harmonica (or at least, a guitar effect that sounds exactly like a harmonica).

Continuing to find perfect names for songs and albums (and the band), the 2009 release of Softly Towards The Light found them incorporating the enveloping sounds of a mellotron they found in a Hoboken studio (one that apparently once belonged to The Moody Blues!?) and using that to make some seriously soulful songs. The record kicks off with the one-two punch of “Run With Me Run” and “Gloomy Monday Morning” which, save for the organ swaths, wouldn’t sound out of place at all on their prior albums, but later tracks like “Everything’s Fine” and “How Did We Get Here” are far more subdued and pretty, and practically tear-inducing if you’re in the right mood and listening carefully. But believe it or not, these songs are not safe from psych/rock-ification; I recall them stretching “Can’t Stop These Tears (From Falling)” into an extended, noisy jam at that live show here and I was amazed at how well it worked.

So I’ve spent enough time and words lavishing great praise upon the band, regardless of how accurate any of it is. The point is this: The Black Hollies have been invited by similarly-named psych-rock revivalists The Black Angels to play at the Austin Psych Fest in a couple months, and this year they’d like to be able to go (they had to decline an invitation last year due to lack of funds). The band members all have day jobs: singer Justin Morey works as a chocolatier, drummer Nick Ferrante is a waiter, and guitarist/organist Jon Gonnelli is a driver for reality TV shows (!?). They now have a funding project on Kickstarter; it expires Wednesday, March 2, and they actually just reached the required level this weekend, but this is still a good chance for you to (a) help out the band, and (b) pick up some merchandise while you’re at it: autographed posters, CDs, etc. And hey, if enough of us donate and make ourselves known, maybe they’ll grace us with their presence here in Pittsburgh again and kick out some live jams. I would fucking love that, and I bet you would, too.

The Black Hollies on the web:
Facebook
MySpace
Twitter
Wikipedia
Artist page on Ernest Jenning Record Co.
Last.fm
Insound
eMusic
Amazon

Filed under: New to Us, New to You?, Not Blake, Jim, or Brendan