Hello Mary – Emita Ox (Frenchkiss Records)
Having just supported American Football on a UK tour Brooklyn’s Hello Mary release a brilliant album in Emita Ox, blending genres from across the alt-rock spectrum
Artist: Hello Mary
Track: Emita Ox
Label: Frenchkiss Records
Released: 13 September 2024
Find it: Bandcamp | Spotify
New York’s Hello Mary are moving at pace and making it look easy. Their recently released Emita Ox lands as they wrap up their first UK tour, with dates supporting American Football as well as headlining, and is a relatively quick follow on from 2023’s self-titled debut album, and 2020’s EP Ginger.
They’ve generated a lot of buzz, but from first play through of Emita Ox it’s clear it’s well deserved. Producer Alex Farrar (Snail Mail, Indigo De Souza) has helped refine and find both the heavy and the intricate in their sound which comes together to make this a textural delight of an album. Let’s get in to the detail.
Opening with Float, there is heaviness from the off, looming over melodic bass lines and vocal harmonies to climax in a burst of noise. This is a band wasting no time asserting themselves, and they double down on this with 0%. With an immense and punchy bassline powering through the track there’s some exhilarating juxtaposition which takes the quiet-loud-quiet principle and explodes it with a plethora of weird and wonderful sonic details.
Three gets off to a gentler start, with hushed percussion and vocals front and centre. There’s a circling riff, and melodic flurries, as the track builds and builds, edging back and forth before dropping away to a hazy spoken word interlude and a last suckerpunch of piano, and sawing guitars. Everything comes in to focus before getting so big you can’t focus at all.
By the time we’re getting toward the midway point of the album with Knowing You, a calmer element starts to seep in. With lilting vocals, and expansive riffs there’s a little Psych energy. This is a song you fall back into and float on, let it wrap around you in all its colours, and carry you away as the fuzz fades out. Heavy Sleeper slows everything down further, even though it be short it be soporific. Those recurring elements from across the album viewed through a different lens.
The second half of the album is full of these changing viewpoints on the signature sound. Footstep Misstep, Courtesy – these are solid alt-rock numbers but things get super interesting once more with Hiyeahi as the band play with electronic textures. An fascinating listen as a track on its own but carrying with the the real spark of potential directions this band may take. Comparisons to Radiohead have been made, and with turns like Hiyeahi it’s easy to understand why.
The album closes with another couple of brilliant alt-rock tracks in Bubble and Everything We Do. The builds to devastating floods of sound are used to grand effect once more, while also leaning in to those softer moments.
Across this album there is a sense of playfulness, of curiosity from the band in what they can create. There are odd time signatures while the huge alt-rock sound this band are so adept at pulls Prog, grunge, jazz, and more into its orbit. The heavy bass lines, picked out guitar lines or huge fuzzy chords, the shimmering to scream vocals, the intriguing electronic moments – there’s thematically lots that carries through the whole album and yet this is very much a collection of songs each strong enough to stand alone.
A definite contender for album of the year, and an incredible release so early in this band’s career.
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Emita Ox by Hello Mary is out now on Frenchkiss Records.
Find Hello Mary: Website | Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram
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Sarah Lay
A long-standing music journalist she's also co-founder of independent record label Reckless Yes, an author of novels, and when not messing around with words and music, a digital strategist.
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