Ahead of the release of their anticipated self-titeld debut album, Brooklyn’s Hello Mary have dropped a new single “Special Treat.” The song opens with disarming harmonies that might recall a schoolyard taunt, or something more sinister, like the summoning of a coven. The band explain, “‘Special Treat’ is pretty much about indulgence of any kind, and doing things for pure momentary pleasure. For the music video, we just wanted to be crazy, eat dope food, and take out our deep resentment towards each other through a food fight.” Listen/share “Special Treat” here and watch the clip, shot by Abbie Jones, here:
Hello Mary is out March 3 via Frenchkiss Records. The band recently announced their first tour in support of the LP with dates kicking off on March 23 in Hamden, CT and concluding in Providence, RI on April 6. They will play a record-release party at Brooklyn’s Elsewhere Zone One on March 24. Tickets for all shows are on-sale now and all dates are listed below.
Hello Mary is Helena Straight (guitar, vox), Mikaela Oppenheimer (bass), and Stella Wave (drums, vox). They have teased the forthcoming album with a string of singles that include the psychadelic “Spiral,” last summer’s earwormy “Rabbit,” and the previously released “Sink In,” “Stinge,” and “Looking Right Into the Sun” which features the band’s trademark harmonies and their ability to meld elements of 90s shoegaze with indie rock and grunge into something that is all their own.
Mikaela started Hello Mary with Helena as freshmen in high school. When they met Stella by happenstance the three became an inseparable unit – as good of friends as they are bandmates. Hello Mary will mark the follow up to their 2020 debut EP Ginger and its subsequent singles. It was the newer singles – which unlike the EP were recorded in a proper studio – that garnered the band attention outside the confines of the Brooklyn music community. Wave describes them as the first proper introduction to Hello Mary. They led Julia Cumming of Sunflower Bean to laud them as her “ favorite new band” and Tonya Donnelly to call them the,”very rare band who nod to their influences while sounding completely new.” KEXP has since had them into their studios for a session. The growth of their songwriting also led them to their deal with esteemed indie-label Frenchkiss Records.
Hello Mary – which was produced by Bryce Goggin (Pavement /Luna) – references alternative rock of the nineties alongside Elliott Smith and Jeff Buckley as influences, heard most vividly on the album’s simmering closer “Burn it Out,” but their contemporaries are bands like Palberta, Spirit of the Beehive, and Palehound, artists who don’t shy from unusual time signatures, careening feedback, and unconventional harmonies, all for the sake of surprising a listener. The album’s “Looking Right Into the Sun,” a song most honestly described as “delightful,” is driven by a tight and dynamic rhythm section that gives way to Straight’s crystalline and confident falsetto.
The album was written during a period of immense uncertainty. “We were battling things personally, the world was battling COVID,” Wave says. So there’s a darkness to it that isn’t apparent on first listen. Yet prioritizing sensation over narrative cohesion opens up the ability to make even the most lyrically devastating songs pleasurable. On the psychedelic “Spiral,” Straight and Wave harmonize to dazzling effect on the chorus, while Oppenheimer’s driving bassline tethers them to earth. “Is it a coincidence? You’re hanging out all night, while I’m on the other side,” they sing to an unknown other. “We’re singing about the paranoia that comes along with relationships, the sense of jealousy that feels like you’re on the outside of things,” Stella says. Relatability gives way to absurdity, too, an example of which arrives in the form of “Special Treat,” which opens with disarming harmonies that might recall a schoolyard taunt, or something more sinister, like the summoning of a coven. The earwormy “Rabbit” is, at its core, a straight ahead rock song that features one rock-star-esque guitar solo.
For a fledgling band, Hello Mary has enviable range, flitting between rock stylings with the ease of studied musicians. They’ve been doing this for a long time, albeit in dorm rooms and the privacy of their parents’ homes, but now they’re offering the product of hours of intimate, synergistic collaboration to the world. Hello Mary abolishes the individual in favor of collective catharsis, and though its singular meaning eludes the band for the time being, decades on it will articulate the most elusive feeling: “How it felt to be us.”
