Portland electro-quartet Hockey has been together barely over a year. But already, they’ve crossed several key items off of their rock ‘n roll laundry list:
Signed to Capitol Records in the U.S. on the strength of one lo-fi EP (2008’s Mind Chaos)? Check.
Garnered proper musical street-cred with endorsements from veteran British taste makers like Zane Lowe and Jools Holland? Check.
Played every noteworthy summer festival from Glastonbury to Bonnaroo to Lollapalooza? Done.
With this behind them, the group is getting ready for an album release this fall and an accompanying tour. But first, it seems, Hockey has to do a little Monday-morning quarterbacking.
“I’d say the more exposure we get, the more it makes us kind of awkwardly self-aware of ourselves,” guitarist Brian White says. “Once you’ve played Jools Holland and you have this video of yourself, you can really examine yourself. It kind of sucks, to be honest. It’s like looking at game footage — seeing where you made mistakes, just rewinding…”
Despite the band’s moniker, that’s where the athletic references end (“it’s kind of a joke. None of us like or play hockey,” White confesses.) They may not be ice jocks, but the group — White, singer Ben Grubin, bassist Jeremy Reynolds, drummer Anthony Stassi and keyboardist Ryan Dolliver — are killing it with a solidly cool sound that’s been compared to everyone from The Strokes to MGMT to, probably “most frequently, LCD Soundsystem.
White admits that on a production level, Hockey draws on the DFA for its fun-loving sound. On the surface, the songs are sharp, quick and palatable. Most boast funky bass lines; all are easy to dance to and digest. Think The Rapture for the Twitter generation.
But chip away at the veneer, and there is fine instrumentation, strong musicianship and plenty of seminal touches — particularly in the form of Grubin’s soulful vocal delivery. Whether he’s anxious lamenting the labor required by relationships in “Work” or New-Wave rapping, Blondie-“Rapture” style, on “3 AM Spanish,” he’s feeling it.
“On a songwriting level, we all like The Strokes and dance music — James Brown, those kind of things,” White says. “Just kind of pickings and elements of dance music and good rock, American rock.”
In anticipation of their album release, it’s the U.K. who will get their Hockey fill first: the group’s departing this week for a headlining tour before their album is released in Britain on September 21. It drops in the U.S. on October 6th, and the band — who plan on playing the CMJ Music Marathon in New York this year — is especially anticipating time spent Stateside.
“We haven’t done anything here,” says White, “only Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza.” He mentions that their Lollapalooza gig was cut short due to some unfortunate tech issues. Being the first band on the schedule for the opening day, Hockey had anticipated having a mere 15 people show up. Instead, there were hundreds.”
“We got that feeling that people really wanted to hear us play,” he says. “We haven’t really done anything in the United States compared to our touring in the U.K…so hopefully, I think we ‘ll play some more shows here.”