Leaking Has Never Felt So Good: Harlem’s Hippies

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Hippies is the dirtiest, most lovable, kind of album.   For anybody who loves basement rock, Hippies will become a staple to your auditory diet throughout the coming months, and has probably already made it’s way on to next years “Best Of” lists. As you make your way from “Gay Human Bones,” to “Poolside,” it becomes apparent that Harlem understand understated, goofy pop music better than anyone else out there, save King Khan and The Black Lips, who are Harlem’s equals, not superiors.

The album starts off with a tongue-in-cheek bang, if there is such a thing, yes, the album starts off with an exploding tongue, “Someday Soon”.  The track is a good melodramatic high, and the opening line of, “Someday soon you’ll be on fire,” is unsettling in it’s sincere delivery.  Like the rest of the songs on the album “Someday Soon” is brief (longest song clocks in at three minutes 38 seconds), filled with strat-twang and early 60′s musical sensibilities.  There is enough variance to keep things interesting though, like on “Prairie My Heart,” a min0r-chord rock n’roll romp through the ceaseless landscape of Texas, as well as, “Be Your Baby,” which sounds like a response than a cover of the Ronettes, “Be My Baby”;  but the best song of the album goes to “Cloud Pleaser,” for it’s smooth Jagger vocals over the mournful riot of guitars and drums.

There are a lot of bands out there trying to do what Harlem is doing, what the Black Lips are doing, but no one does it as successfully as them, and anybody mistaking Harlem for another lo-fi retro garage band, is musically uneducated.

Harlem just made the best album of the year so far, and they did it all under 41 minutes.

Mp3: Harlem -  Someday Soon

Mp3: Harlem – Cloud Pleaser