Although she’s releasing her debut album this week, Mallory Hawk is a veteran of the DIY scene—both behind the scenes and as a performer, fronting bands like Customer and How Says (or even just appearing in her friends’ videos). And Chinook certainly reflects that experience, if not also her lifelong music fandom. Even before browsing the playlist of influences she crafted for us, the diversity of sound heard on the 10 tracks that make up her debut album reflect a variety of interests well beyond the post-punk sounds she’s helped create alongside her bandmates in the past. It’s rare to find alt-country tunes next to minimal-wave compositions on an album’s track list.
While bands like Alice in Chains and Butthole Surfers helped her get back in the headspace of a teenager growing up in North Carolina, post-punk bands like Gang of Four demonstrated how a genre so uptight could be danceable, and Garbage’s Shirley Manson proved a role model in bringing a bit of sass to the equation. Elsewhere, journeys down various rabbit holes related to new wave from the Eastern bloc and Swiss egg punk lent Chinook its unique shadings beyond its variety of sound. There’s also a bit of CCM post-hardcore in there to establish these songs as being, without a doubt, the work of a Millennial songwriter who came of age within the brief window of that somehow being a cultural phenomenon.
With Chinook out this Friday, pre-order the album here and check out the full playlist below.
Gang of Four, “Damaged Goods”
Why not start with one of the greatest punk songs of all time? The way Andy Gill’s treble-heavy guitar just punches through the bass line was an immediate and lifelong inspiration to me and defined so much punk music that followed it. It just makes things feel a little bit off. I utilized that same approach on the verses of “D’Anger.” I like when you can dance to punk, when it has a bounce. I think ’70s/’80s punk does that best. I remember cycling heavily through this album and Secondhand Daylight by Magazine in the spring of 2023.
The Staches, “Great Depression”
This is a largely unknown punk band from Geneva, Switzerland. I found them on a massive egg-punk playlist and dove into their whole catalog after hearing the song “Fake Stomach Ache.” I love how their zany keyboard sounds cut through the classic punk guitar tones. It just tickled me, and that’s what made me play organ on the song “Caretaker”—it just feels like a wink. This whole record is really fantastic!
Garbage, “I Think I’m Paranoid”
I was listening to this song a lot ahead of recording; I wanted to really get in the Butch Vig production headspace. I’ve loved Shirley’s telephone vocal treatments and sass since childhood. We had a telephone vocal mic at the Headroom where I recorded and we pretty much always left that next to the main vocal mic, so there’s plenty of that all over the record. There’s also just a kiss of trip-hop on early Garbage songs, which is something I strived for with this record initially, but none of it really made the cut or fit the songs. I have some newer demos that play with that palette more.
Alice in Chains, “Down in a Hole (MTV Unplugged)”
Alice in Chains is a huge influence on me overall. I’ve been covering this song at my solo shows for years. I think this version is better than the studio! I feel they remain one of the most unique rock bands of all time, and no one has really captured their essence since. Like most fans I just adore Jerry and Layne’s harmonies and all the darkness in their textures. It also just reminds me of the radio and the suburbs and how that music really felt like it was made for me. That grunge feeling inspired a lot of the haunted harmonies that are present on “Felicity” and “Four ’O Clocks.” This band is also the reason I ever tuned my guitar down a half step down. Using that tuning for the first time led to the songs “The Mirror” and “Low Rise.”
Butthole Surfers, “Pepper”
This song didn’t particularly inspire any song on the record, but inspired me in general. It’s one of my favorite headphone listens. I love how they essentially emulate wind on this song—it’s just an immersive experience. I love how much weird rock music made the radio in the ’90s. It also has that trip-hop kiss in a raw way. That inspires me consistently!
Alyans, “Ha 3ape”
My friend Joe (of the great band Dirt Buyer—please go listen) sent me this Soviet synthpop song from the ’80s (best experienced in this iconic live TV performance), and I tumbled down a long obsession with Eastern European darkwave during the pandemic. I remember ordering cassettes from Russia and them arriving three weeks later and being like, “What am I doing here?” I obviously wrote “Superhighway” during this time, the only new-wavey dance tune on the record.
John Mayer, “No Such Thing”
OK, it pains me to write this because I know this guy is a certified jerk, but this is just an excellent song. There are so many chords in this song, and the way he pieces them all together is just great craft. The snare sound is also tops. I heard it for the first time in years and it made me pick up my guitar afterward and play with some new rhythms that informed the record.
Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, “Inca Roads”
I’m gonna continue my transparency here with controversial figures: I’ve loved this song since I was a preteen. This CD was in heavy rotation in my mother’s car on the way to middle school; I know it like the back of my hand. But I listened to it last year and I was very high, and it was very loud, and the guitar solo just took on a new life and changed me eternally. The very next day I munched on some mushrooms and wrote the guitar solo for “Low Rise,” which is one of my proudest moments on the record. I’d been trying to play solos over it for a few days and nothing was right. Anyway, don’t do drugs. Unless it’s a harmless amount of mushrooms that helps you through a musical breakthrough.
Stone Temple Pilots, “Plush”
“D’Anger” was the only problem child of the record. We couldn’t seem to capture the essence of the demo and tried a lot of things to remedy that. This song came into play when we decided to add an incognito riff. Something that was placed quite shyly, as they do on this song at 2:43. It ended up sealing the song with a nice tight bow. “Creep” was also generally a huge inspiration for me. There’s a 2001 live performance at Rolling Rock in Pennsylvania that means a lot to me.
As Cities Burn, “Made Too Pretty”
This band was very influential to me as a teenager and fell square in the Contemporary-Christian-coded post-hardcore world that I was deep in. I’ve always loved how Cody Bonnette plays guitar—it added this really palpable blues element that other bands in the genre didn’t possess. I was revisiting this band after a long while and really admired how they started so many songs with all these atmospheric effects, but never overdid it. I have this ElectroHarmonix Memory Man with Hazarai pedal—it was my first ever guitar pedal and I was oddly insistent with myself that I used it on the album. Zoning in on this band’s atmospheres and my determination to use the pedal cracked the case on my album opener “The Mirror.”
Hayley Williams, “Just a Lover”
Lifelong Paramore head. Could write an essay alone on how Hayley has changed my life as the only star woman in emo. This is the final track on her second solo album, Flowers for Vases. She’s great with a close vocal mixed with a distant more emotional vocal. That technique can be found on the bridge of “Four O’Clocks.”
