Hallelujah The Hills

Good evening! Can you feel it? It's time to put a new news update up on the Hallelujah The Hills website. Do you want it concise and link-laden? Or do you want it rambling and metaphorical? Look, I know how to do both so I want you to feel comfortable regardless of your preference. The sessions for the 3rd album have definitely concluded. The artwork has been drafted. The title is decided. But guess what? You gotta mix and master the actual songs which we have yet to do. We're working on it. For this album we started on tape and we're ending digitally and there's some technical alchemy involved that you can't just jump into all willy-nilly. Some more patience never killed anyone. We had a hurricane, we had an earthquake. Summer is awful.

Want to hear acoustic versions of two new songs, a vague back story for Introductory Saints, and see the band performing in front of a wall of wine? All these things happened at our Sleepover Shows session. A little later on Ryan was asked to be a guest lecturer on the web-comic Surviving The World. Head lecturer Dante found the spiel acceptable so we promise another installment of the chalk variety of around album release time. Hey, if you haven't discovered it yet we'd like to encourage you to check out the live-interview-show/podcast that Ryan and author Steve Almond host entitled This Has Been A Disaster - Thanks For Having Us. I bet you wouldn't believe that more stuff happened. Well, it did. Before Hallelujah The Hills there was a band called The Stairs and their entire discography was newly digitized and re-released online. Lastly, if you enjoy extremely-specific-niche-awards you need to look at this, as well.

But, now, let us bury the lead and talk about the most exciting news. We're playing shows in Boston and New York this fall and we'd love to see you there. Details over on the Shows page. Please join us.

Now it's time for bed. I gotta help a friend move tomorrow.

• Summer 2010 – A mysterious person contacts us via email asking if we’d like to participate in the first of a series of limited edition short run lathe cut 7” he or she was planning on putting out. Being fond of vinyl and shady, groundless business propositions we said yes.

• Early Fall 2010 – We record the two songs for the 7” in 24 hours at the Soul Shop recording studio in Medford, MA. During this session Elio and Ryan place stamp #7/10 on their Asian eatery frequent customer card. They dream of their impending free entrée. Joe brings a Johnny Cash record that no of us had ever, ever heard of and insisted we sample it on the B side.

• Our mysterious vinyl backer becomes even more elusive when we flat out ask for his/her name because they were omitting it from their emails. The omission, shockingly, is purposeful and the backer asks for us to refer to him or her merely as, ‘F’.

• However, this anonymous entrepreneur proves to be fairly worth his or her salt when they promptly pay for the mastering of the two 7” songs. Fears which had previously run rampant in the band are somewhat quelled. Lady Gaga wows a nation with second rate David Cronenberg imagery clumsily stapled to average pop music.

• F tells us that the people cutting the vinyl will be done by late January. We book our release show safe in the knowledge that all will work out despite the nutty, non-traditional methods employed.

• Late Winter 2011 – The vinyl purveyors stop returning F’s emails and phone calls. They post “no more orders!” on their Facebook and Twitter. No vinyl arrives. Hallelujah The Hills stand side by side on the edge of a road, just about sunset, look off into the distance, and all mutter to themselves, “now this? My god, now this?”

• Ryan & Brian begin to attempt to contact the vinyl purveyors by every conceivable method. In a last ditch effort Brian calls an Athens, GA record store and says, “Hey, do you know anyone from _______ vinyl?” The record store employee surprisingly says, “Yes, they’re actually browsing the racks here right now!”

• Brian talks to the vinyl purveyor for a brief 5 minutes. She spins tales of broken machinery, backed up orders, and a harrowing move from Seattle to Athens. She promises to call with another update that very night. She is never heard from again and a communication black out is once again instituted.

• Ryan calls daily begging for an update whether it’s good or bad news. No calls, no vinyl. We’re so sorry, friends. The songs can be downloaded on Bandcamp. What have I learned from all this? Songs and ideas routinely overcome their format. And a shop name that rhymes with ‘Shingle Fleece Plate’ vinyl can take a walk until their hat floats. They are no friends of ours. Enjoy the songs. All the best, Hallelujah The Hills.

I turn a lot in my sleep.  This morning it was suggested to me that I ceaselessly shift like a rotisserie chicken during slumber.  I replied that I wanted my dreams to be properly cooked before consuming.

It is in that spirit that we bring up the subject of Album III before it is even recorded, titled, or fully written.  Our wonderful times with Misra Records are on pause and we're trying an experiment.  Can our studio costs for Album III be covered by fans pre-ordering a record they'd purchase upon release anyway?  Check out the experiment right here.

Our drummer quit on stage the other night. We'll file this one in the department of regrettable fuck-ups.  Video explanation here.

What else? Don't try to be cool.  Don't hate for fun.  Just keep looking for ideas, put them out in the world, and try to be a decent tipper.

If you didn't get to see one of the Titus Andronicus shows featuring the Jah Hills Mini Orchestra you missed something special. We'll have some audio proof available for you eventually but for now we hope you enjoy some photos from the tour.

We'd be fools not to squeeze some short bouts of touring into our favorite season. Two long weekends in September and October culminating with a night-before-Halloween party/show in Boston. We'll also solve several mail fraud cases & teach a curmudgeonly teen how to rekindle her school spirit.

Ryan is asking for bands and musicians to send him recordings of songs without any vocals for an experiment in songwriting/overdubs. He'll make up a melody, lyrics, and record vocals on top of the track. Submitters need to either own the copyright or have not copyrighted the song at all. A free downloadable album is the planned endgame. Email MP3s to band@hallelujahthehills.com.

And finally, Hallelujah The Hills original artwork and more is now available for sale on Etsy.

When [Titus Andronicus] returns from Europe to tour North America in June, they'll expand into an eight-piece, complete with cello, keyboards, and horn players borrowed from tour openers Hallelujah the Hills. Considering that they already did a pretty amazing job conveying the heft and majesty of The Monitor onstage as a quintet, this should be pretty awesome.

Pitchfork, April 29, 2010