[GARAGE ROCK, GROWN UP] Hey Lover is like, a bajillion years old.
In Portland band years, that is. By the regular old Gregorian calendar, the garage-rock two-piece—which releases its new album, Tennessee,
on Sept. 23—appeared with a self-titled debut only four years ago. But
in a town where a Best New Band (Hey Lover made the list in 2007) can
rise and fall with remarkable speed, Hey Lover is an old-timer.
That might not be
such a bad thing. Certainly, it’s cool by the husband-and-wife duo,
Justin and Terah Beth Varga. Sitting in a Foster-Powell bar, the
easygoing couple—Justin has dark features and a pensive air; Terah Beth
is blond, an elfin twinkle in her eye—say they don’t feel rushed about
making music. After all, for them, Hey Lover is more a lifestyle than an
urgent project. Justin and Terah Beth learned their
instruments—electric guitar and drums, respectively—together roughly a
decade ago, and they’ve only played together since. “It just sort of
feels like part of life,” Terah Beth says.
It’s not for lack of
trying, though, that the band hasn’t produced a full-length since 2007.
The Vargas tried to record a follow-up themselves, but they were stymied
by problems both technical and creative. “We needed help,” Justin says.
“Sometimes that’s hard to admit, or understand.”
That help came from
Rick Duncan, a music-scene friend who was looking for projects for his
new studio. Hey Lover gratefully acquiesced to being a guinea pig, and
credits Tennessee’s polished sound not only to Duncan’s
engineering, but to the studio itself. Located in a ’70s-era accounting
firm, Duncan’s facilities provided the band with space “to explore a
little more,” Justin says. “And, in my opinion, I think it helped a
lot.”
Indeed, the record
that came out of that accounting office doesn’t just have higher
production values than Hey Lover’s debut; it’s also a more mature album.
In most ways, the Hey Lover on Tennessee is the same Hey Lover
as ever: a garage-rock band with a pop sensibility and a punk heart (not
to mention an arrestingly frenetic stage presence). Those traits are
evident on lead single “Our Heads in a Hole,” a cry against Portland
winters that displays genetic Hey Lover traits such as shouted dual
vocals, ebullient drum work and catchy guitar lines. But while the
record features plenty of poppy, fun songs, as well as fast-and-furious
tracks like “Piranha,” there are also pleasant surprises such as album
sign-off “I Can Tell,” a slow dance anchored by Justin’s frail-sounding
vocals and swelled by cello and horns.
“Before,” Terah Beth
says, “I used to always be sort of scared of slow songs, like it was
going to turn people off from our music.” Instead, much of the positive
early feedback the band has gotten for Tennessee has centered on
the album’s sway-along tracks. That’s probably because those songs
display musicians newly at ease with themselves—and willing to let
listeners lean in close.
“We’re not as scared
of downtime, or slower stuff, or laying an emotion out rather than just
trying to blast out sound,” Justin says. “I think we’ve become more
comfortable being vulnerable.”
SEE IT: Hey Lover plays the Kenton Club on Friday, Sept. 23, with Pelican Ossman. 9 pm. Free. 21+.
