1354 West Wabansia Ave, Chicago, IL 60642 | 773.227.4433
West-coast fever dream denizens Hooveriii have been cracking the cosmic egg for years now, slowly amassing a catalog of releases scrawled with garage, glam, psych-pop and prog. Initially started as the solo guise of Bert Hoover (Jesus Sons, Mind Meld, GROOP), the band has evolved into an enigmatic magnet for L.A. heads and likeminded wanderers as their ranks have swelled and releases grew from bedroom burners to widescreen wonders. Carving their way out of a long tour following the release of their last album, Pointe, the band was instantly ready to return to the task of new material. Self-imposing a tight timeframe, the band wrote the bulk of the new record in in a month and entered John Dwyer’s short-lived, but much loved, psych-punk pressure cooker Discount Mirrors with Eric Bauer at the controls. Making full use of Bauer’s prowess with big, bilious guitars, the resulting Manhunter is one of the band’s most massive records yet.
With Bauer behind the boards, the goal was to grow the album’s sound to massive proportions; a record ripped on guitars and fed on amplifier fumes. Not that the band’s light on riffs in their catalog, but here, each song growls with an instinctual catharsis. The tighter turnaround added to a more prominent sense of urgency and an ozone-fried tension in the air. That tension turns the album darker. Fueled by a time of personal upheaval for Hoover, the record’s themes ruminate on discomfort and unease. The darkness smelts with a surreal paranoia that seeps in from van rides and hotel hole-ups spent ingesting dark alleys and double crosses in the films of Michael Mann and William Freidkin. The album’s title nods to Mann’s Manhunter, a film that informed the record’s live wire air and creeping dread. Like their cinematic counterparts, more than a few tracks skid around corners with a look over their shoulder — wild-eyed, popped vein rockers sipping adrenaline by the ounce.
Cairo Jag is a 3-piece, psych rock and roll band from Indianapolis, IN. Forming in 2017, they quickly became a local staple in Indianapolis’ eclectic music scene. Overlapping influences that derive from punk, rock, soul and psychedelic music from the past and present, they’ve created their own brand of unhinged rock and roll.
