Perhaps taking a page from popular hip-hop’s current moment of frantic beat switches and amped-up energy, Brooklyn trio HYPEMOM are sharing a new single today that feels like a dozen or so songs smashed together—if not played on top of each other, when dual vocalists Colin Lord and Luke Santy are reciting lyrics simultaneously. “Joanna” arrives ahead of a planned EP for 2024 titled Has Reservations, and its glued-back-together-glass-shards sound is, in fact, likely derived from its being written “in fits and starts” over the course of several rehearsal sessions. “We wanted it to sound like a frenzied roadhouse banger,” the band shares, “somewhat tougher than our usual melodic fare—a kind of leather-jacketed George Michael Bluth.”
That frenzy features at least one Kanye lyrical interpolation over the course of four minutes before the track fizzles out with what appears to be a sample of the Godfather theme. As far as more direct influences go, HYPEMOM are transparent about where they pull from. “We probably don’t need to tell you we love the Single Mothers’ self-titled EP, but since we did we’ll also shout out Bike Thiefs.” Maybe Wally Brando would be a better reference point as far as Michael Cera pseudo-tough-guy TV roles go.
Check out the track below, which comes paired with an aptly fractured visual directed by the band’s drummer Matt Caldamone which ties together disparate scenes of the band performing that track alongside mid-20th-century found footage and outer-space imagery.
