Featured Artist Interview: The Happy Hollows


By Travis Woods

Photography by www.shutterface.com

The sound of a pop mantis getting its head torn off by it’s art-thrash lover, the Happy Hollows combine jittery, nervous shards of rhythmic guitar paranoia with sweetly layered vocals that glide from gentle coo to sideways howl as their shadows dance against a musical backdrop of rock promiscuity—experimental noise rubs up against pop hooks before slipping off with indie snarls. A quirky, highwire balance of crazed musical extremes, the Hollows are one of the most energetic, ear-assaulting live acts in Los Angeles, and one of the most disarmingly charming.

Web in Front recently met guitarist/vocalist Sarah Negahdari and bassist Charlie Mahoney for a discussion of the band’s history, as well as their upcoming album and the trials and tribulations of musical pregnancy.

The Interview

Web In Front: Before we talk about anything else, I’ve got to say that “Lieutenant” has been stuck in my head all month. It won’t get out.

Sarah Negahdari: Yes! Great!

WiF: If you could play it on Wednesday, maybe exorcise it for me, I’d appreciate it. That song’s insidiously catchy.

So, I found out this week that you’ll be playing Sunset Junction in August, congratulations.

Sarah: Thank you…we’re really excited…

WiF: So am I—it’s going to be a good one. You, Radars to the Sky, the Henry Clay People… It’s gonna be a good summer for L.A. music, I think.

You have a few shows coming up before that, right? Sarah’s solo set on Sunday the 25th, then a full-band performance at the Echo on Wednesday the 28th, and in Long Beach on Thursday the 29th… I haven’t been lucky enough to catch the solo show— what are the differences between it and a band performance? Do these songs just not fit in with the Happy Hollows sound?

Sarah: The songs are completely different. I’ve been writing so much over the past year—I got rid of my car and locked myself in my apartment—and wrote, and wrote, and wrote, and those songs were mostly Happy Hollows songs that we recorded last summer…but there are all these little pieces and songs that just didn’t fit. We tried playing them live, and they didn’t flow, because the Hollows songs are so energized, and these are very quiet.

Charlie Mahoney: Sarah’s solo music is more folk-styled, much quieter and not quite as experimental as most of the Happy Hollows material.

WiF: Fair warning: the next few questions are the typical constellation of rock interview questions, because we’re trying to be as comprehensive as possible…

Both: [laughs]

WiF: Moving backwards, how did the Happy Hollows form?

Both: We just went over this a few days ago, at KROQ with Kat…

Charlie: The basic story is this: Chris [Meanie] and I already knew each other, we both lived in Washington D.C. I moved out California to start grad school, Chris did it for a job…We didn’t move out here together, it just worked out at the same time.

I started playing music with Chris, and we were auditioning different guitarists and lead singers, and, eventually, Sarah answered an ad that we put out. We had one rehearsal/tryout with her, but we didn’t really play anything—she just wanted to talk, mostly.

Sarah: [laughs]

Charlie: Usually, with the audition process, you do that afterwards…“this is going really well,” you know? That’s when you really try to get to know the person, after you think it’s going to be a good fit. Sarah, she basically talked to us for like 50 minutes, then played two songs with us, and then had to leave to play a show.

Sarah: I was playing for a year, by myself, around L.A. under the name The Happy Hollows, rocking out onstage and pretending like I had a band behind me. I had been auditioning dudes for a year trying to find a band, and just met so many freaks, it wasn’t really working. But then I saw Charlie’s ad, and I had a gut feeling about it. And then, when I walked into the room to meet them, it felt like they were old friends, so I just kept talking and talking to them.

We played one song, I think, and I said something like, “Are you guys in my band, or what?”

WiF: Sarah, what about their ad got your attention?

Charlie: I remember I put something in there like “Not looking to be like a business,” or something like that. All these bands on craigslist.com in L.A. were very much “Industry attention!” and “Must Have Manager!” or “Must Have Label Interest”…and this is before they have any songs written. I just wanted to write some songs, play them, have a good time and see what happens. But when people are trying to sell a vision or idea for a product, before they even have the product ready…I just wasn’t interested in that.

Sarah: Exactly. Also, every band he listed in the ad had a female in it, and I was very “Yeaaahhh!” Pixies, Blonde Redhead, Sonic Youth…all of these bands have an interesting female counterpart inside them, and I thought that Charlie, then, would be cool with having a female in the band who would lead the way and say what’s what! [laughs]

WiF: The generic question portion isn’t over yet—what drove you to music?

Sarah: I was, like a lot of musicians, listening to music since I was a toddler. I wrote musicals for my neighborhood when I was a kid, in elementary school. I’d have these karaoke music tapes that I’d write my own words to, and then I’d cast the musicals, and make all these songs…everyone hated these things! I had one called “The Enchanted Kingdom” that had 41 parts, it went all summer long [laughs]. I’ve basically been making music as long as I can remember.

Charlie: I was a big music fan in high school, really into stuff like postpunk, and I was into a couple bands…in college, I started getting into electronic music. That was really fun for me because it allowed me to compose and play all these songs on my own, on my computer, without needing other people to play. I really like building songs that way—taking the raw parts of a song and adding a bassline or a bridge and building it up.

WiF: As far as songwriting is concerned, who inspires you?

Charlie: I love the Who, Sonic Youth, Pixies, Daft Punk…

Sarah: Our friends’ bands…like Rob Danson from Death to Anders, meeting him changed everything…I feel like I’m more myself when I play music onstage. I don’t think I communicate very well any other way. That’s what drives my songwriting, more than anything.

Charlie: I’m inspired by all kinds of art and artists, and I try to incorporate them into our music. One thing that I take from literature is to sometimes avoid linear structure in the songs…you know Julio Cortázar, who wrote Hopscotch? In that novel, it has chapters out of sync, you can read them in any order. And you can take an idea like that and apply it to music, by structuring a song in an odd or unique way, with maybe no verse or no chorus, or repeat certain parts of the song in odd places…

WiF: Since both of you are songwriters, how does the songwriting process take shape between the two of you?

Sarah: There’s three ways. One way is that I’ll write everything, beginning to end, every tiny detail I can, and then I bring it in and they add their bass and drum parts. Like “Lieutenant,” that’s one I did from beginning to end.

Another way is we’ll build a song together by jamming. And the third way, I’ll bring in something raw and Charlie will arrange and rearrange it, and edit it in unique ways.

Unless it’s one of the songs I’ve written beginning to end, Charlie is the one who really pulls all the different parts together to make a whole song, because I really don’t like doing that…

WiF: Your band has a very specific sound—there’s a dichotomy, of really whimsical, playful pop getting it’s head bitten off by ferocious art thrash. How much of that already existed, conceptually, before the band began, and how much came out of the unique combination of the three of you, as an outgrowth of your personalities?

Charlie: We didn’t really have a set sound planned. We love catchy hooks, but we also love raw music. We knew that we didn’t want to be a band that just played straight ambient music, and we didn’t want to be a regular pop band—that’s a bit too clean and pretty for us, so it felt natural to just merge the two.

WiF: Is it difficult to maintain that balance between the two extremes? Do you ever feel like you’re tipping too far in one direction or the other?

Charlie: We’ve had moments… “This is too cheesy” or “This is too weird.” We try to be careful and not fall into playing music that’s fun to play but isn’t any fun to listen to.

I have a short attention span—

Sarah: We all do. We’re definitely an ADD band. We’re a Sesame Street generation band.

Charlie: —so the songs, we try to make them as catchy as we can, make them songs we’d want to hear over and over again. We don’t have a lot of patience in this band, there’s not a lot of slow build-ups in our songs. [laughs]

Sarah: No, there’s not! Get to the point!

Charlie: Yeah, sometimes we put the chorus to a song right at the very beginning. We want to get your attention right away, as well as ours.

WiF: Does writing happen in cycles and waves for you? I’m a writer—of fiction, not songs, I could never write a song to save my life—and sometimes I’ll be doing something random, walking through Amoeba or cooking dinner, and an idea hits me and I have to write it immediately. Other times, I’ll feel like I’ve gone way too long without having written something, and I get really desperate and feel like I have to force a story out.

Sarah: Let me tell you how it works for me: I’ll go for six months without writing—dry, just dry as a bone. It’s really depressing—like you said, “Why can’t I write?!?”—and then, suddenly, it’s like I get pregnant! [laughs] I can feel songs growing, I can feel them coming on. Finally, after a long period, “Arrrgggh!” and they all start writing themselves out. I’ll lock myself in my apart for two months and write like a madwoman. I’ll write in chunks, like thirty songs, and then pick out the best five, and then there’ll be another dry spell. And that’s how it is for me.

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Listen to “Monster Room”

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WiF: What phase are you in now?Sarah [yelling]: The baby is coming OUT! [laughs]

I’m writing like a madwoman right now. It’s awesome, I’m happy!

Charlie: I don’t write as many as Sarah. The songs I write tend to come out of long, slow processes…it’ll take us a few months to get them together in practice. I’ll write a bassline, and I’ll do lyrics, but I don’t write the other parts…

Sarah: But, oddly enough, his songs end up being the best. I’m sitting at home with my guitar going “Damn that bastard!”

WiF: Is there a healthy creative competition in the band, as far as the songwriting is concerned? Do you push each other to do better?

Sarah: I think Charlie is the one person in the entire universe that totally gets my songs, whether they’re the folk songs or the Happy Hollows. There’s not a competition, it’s a really nice work environment…

Charlie: I’m able to tell Sarah when she brings in a new song, “This sound too much like this song or that song,” and then she’ll get really mad—

Sarah: [laughs]

Charlie: —but then she understands. We’re good critics of one another. She’ll do the same to me. We’re both good listeners and critics of one another. We want every song to sound new, and not sound like the last one, it works well to bounce ideas off one another.

Sarah: And it’s just fun, and that counts for everything.

WiF: Subject change: Sarah, what brought you to L.A.?

Sarah: I’m originally from the Bay area, and then I moved to New York to play my acoustic music…but I started getting this feeling that I needed to move to L.A. if I wanted to put a band together, so I moved here.

WiF: Well, it paid off—the local scene has really embraced you as a band. For me, the Hollows are one of the quintessential L.A. indie groups right now…

Sarah: Thank you!

Charlie: Yeah, we’ve gotten a lot of great support and feedback. We’ve been able to play with so many fantastic bands from the area… Silversun Pickups, Earlimart, Airborne Toxic Event, Henry Clay People, Radars to the Sky—

Sarah: Have we played with every band?!? [laughs]

Charlie: —and that’s just such a great community to work within, and with. And it’s not a competitive community, which is nice. It’s more like a massive group of friends.

WiF: Who are you listening to right now?

Sarah: Local scene?

WiF: Yeah.

Sarah: Let me tell you, I cannot get Tigers Can Bite You out of my CD player. It’s so damn good. I love Death to Anders, Fictitious Business is really good. The new Movies—

WiF: Jesus, that’s a great one. I can’t stop listening to that, and Airborne’s new album. They’re both amazing.

Sarah: —I just can’t stop listening to it. Let’s see, the Pity Party…

Charlie: Pity Party, the Soft Hands…

Sarah: Karabal Nightlife, their new CD is really good, really beautiful. You saw them at Let’s Independent!, right?

WiF: I did, they were great. What’s your favorite L.A. venue to play?

Charlie: We’ve played a lot of shows at the Echo, we always get a good crowd there. That’s like our home base.

WiF: Your live shows are just unhinged, in terms of energy and performance. I’ve talked with some musicians who say that when they watch clips from their live shows, they don’t recognize themselves, because they’re just losing it on stage. Do you feel the same?

Sarah: I can’t watch, I can’t watch live clips of us. I’m afraid I’ll see myself do something that I think is stupid and never do it again, but to the audience, it’s something that worked or looked cool. I don’t want to feel self-conscious like that on stage.

WiF: What are you thinking of when you play?

Sarah: I try my hardest to be intensely present, to just be there. It’s hard to explain. I try to think of nothing else but playing the music and really, really, really being there.

WiF: And that pushes you away from self-consciousness?

Sarah: Yeah… I can’t let myself think about or feel anything but the songs. I can’t think something like, “Did they like me?” If you do that, as a performer, you’re done. You do that once, and then it leads to “They’re not clapping, why aren’t they clapping? Do they not like me? Those guys, those guys over there are talking to each other, why aren’t they listening?” and you just slip and fall. You have to just be there for yourself, for you. I feel like it’s my time to express myself, you’ll either like it or you won’t…and it then it can be like a wheel, if the audience likes it they give back, which builds my performance, and they give back even more and it gets bigger and bigger…

WiF: I know someone who thinks your music is beautiful, but is terrified of you as people, because of the live show. He said the band is like that girl from high school who’s gorgeous and you want to ask her out, but you’re sure she could kick your ass so you don’t say anything at all.

Sarah: [laughs] Oh my God!

WiF: Which is funny, because offstage you guys are so nice and quiet…

Charlie: [laughs] We’re very shy… we don’t really have a member who goes out and works the crowd…we like to hang out with people, but we’re definitely a bi-polar band. We’re very intense on stage, but as soon as we get off we’re really mellow and just want to hang out.

WiF: Yeah, there’s that dichotomy again. I just thought you’d like to know there’s a guy walking around L.A. who’s absolutely terrified of you.

What has been your best live show, so far?

Sarah: Fillmore!

Charlie: The Fillmore with the Silversun Pickups was a special one. There were so many people there…it was nerve-wracking but fun, it was a really great experience.

Sarah: Such a great venue…

Charlie: As for L.A., I’d say the last night of our Echo residency was great…

Sarah: That was a really magical night, I think…

WiF: I want to talk about the Bunnies and Bombs EP…

Sarah: I met the band, and then we met Rob from Death to Anders, who worked at the Musician’s Institute and he offered to let us come in and record overnight for cheap, like at 3 am. Our reason for recording Bunnies and Bombs was to have a demo so that we could get gigs…we wrote those songs in two weeks and recorded them overnight…it was crazy, we didn’t expect it to do as well as it did…all these music videos came out of it, it really held us afloat for a year.

Charlie: It was pretty quickly done…I like it, but I would have liked to have put a bit more money and time into it. We had only been a band for three months at the time, and we needed a recording to show that we could play.

Now, it’s like two years later, and I don’t really want people to hear that EP and think “This is the Happy Hollows” simply because we’ve evolved so much since then, with better, more representative recordings. Stuff like “Lieutenant” and “Monster Room”…

WiF: One song from that EP that struck me was “Vietnam.” It really seems to sum up your sound as a whole—it’s like this innocent mental playground, like you’re listening to someone’s whimsical or playful inner landscape, and then there’s the chaotic crush of the real world crashing in…Does that make any sense at all?

Charlie: That’s a good defining song for us, lyrically, in that there’s a lot of paranoia and anxiety, but then it’s really quirky and making fun of itself at the same time.

WiF: Sarah, you mentioned to me at Spaceland last week that the band has recorded a new album…

Sarah: We’re really excited, we recorded it last summer and fall with our producer Dave Newton, who’s really great. We did 18 (or maybe it’s 20) songs, and now we’re doing these little dances with labels, going back and forth to figure out the best way to release it, whether we should go with a label or do it ourselves. We’re still in the middle of all that…it’s really scary, it’s this big unknown place…

WiF: Before we get into the business aspect, let’s talk about the sound—did you get what you wanted this time around?

Charlie: Yeah…Definitely. It’s not overproduced, it was recorded really well. I’m really happy with it—especially the drum sound. Because we’re a three-piece, we needed a producer who could record drums well—the drums really fill out a lot of space that, in a larger band, would be filled by two guitarists and a synth player. Chris is excellent—he really gets rid of that empty space with rolls and fills…We’re really happy with it.

The songs are a bit more ambitious, a little bit longer, but still interspersed with shorter catchy ones. We didn’t want a lo-fi, grungy sound, but, at the same time, we didn’t want it to be overproduced. And I think we got what we wanted.

WiF: As far as label madness goes, do you have any idea how/when it will be released?

Sarah: Nope.

Charlie: I was hoping to know by the end of this week, but it’s something that’s just taking forever. It’s hard, when you’re a musician and you just want to play, but you’ve got to figure out how to work with all the lawyers and contracts and publishing, and learn all about them…and about how there are people out there who want to take as much as they can from you.

So we’re just trying to understand that part of the music world right now. I mean, labels, they’re not evil or anything, they’re just businesses trying to make money like anyone else.

Sarah: It’s so scary, though. Nobody knows where the industry will be even a year from now.

WiF: I ask a lot of bands this: does that alter your view of the album as a cohesive work, since mp3s are whittling away at the idea of concept-driven LPs?

Sarah: Not at all. When I was writing this music, I saw it like a book—every song is a chapter that moves the story forward, they all fit together to form a picture of a moment in time.

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Listen to “Meteors”

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WiF: So do you know who you’re signing with, or is it still in negotiations?Sarah: We’re still negotiating…

WiF: Are you thinking of side-stepping labels entirely and self-releasing it?

Charlie: Maybe. A lot of people say that labels aren’t necessary anymore, but that’s only true, really, if you’ve got $50,000 lying around to fuel the entire thing… There are hardly any cases of bands starting with no label at all and doing really well…Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is the only one I can think of, and I’m not even sure how well they did, financially.We’re still navigating this weird world of distribution and licensing…we’re getting there.

WiF: Every time I discuss this issue with local bands, there’s this pause where they sigh and sink lower in their chairs. This half of the business can be a drag, because it’s a business.

Sarah: Exactly.

WiF: Since the album’s been finished for some time now, do you worry that you’ll get sick of it before it comes out?

Sarah: Oh yeah…that’s part of any band. Any band you see, I’m sure they’re sick of playing a lot of those songs…but that’s something you have to do as an artist and performer—playing with the enthusiasm of a person who’s playing the song for the first time.

Charlie: Plus, we’re always writing new songs. We’ve already got 10 or 15 set aside for another album, so we always have something new to work on, new places to go.

It’s not hard to play older songs during a show, not at all. But when it’s just us, at practice, we tend to stick with the new ones.

WiF: It’s probably way too presumptuous to ask, since the LP hasn’t even come out yet, but do you have long-term plans for those new songs?

Charlie: Well, first, Sarah’s got her solo songs that she’s going to record, probably this summer, so we’re probably not going to record the new Hollows songs for awhile…

WiF: The only reason I ask is that I know a lot of people in bands who’ve told me that if they don’t record a song as quickly as possible, they immediately begin to lose interest in it.

Sarah: Yeah, that’s true.

Charlie: I feel that the more time you have with a song, the more you can add to it, the better it will be. Some of the songs that we recorded last summer were two years old—they were songs that we gave time to grow—

Sarah: Hi, Castledoor!

[At this point, Nate and Lisa from Castledoor come strolling past the outdoor café where the interview is taking place]

Both: How’s it going?

Sarah: Congratulations to all of us for playing Sunset Junction! [laughs]

Nate: Oh, yeah! Have you ever done that before?

Sarah: No, first time!

We’re doing an interview with Web in Front today…

Nate: We saw you were being interviewed—

Lisa: And we just decided we should jump in, answer some questions about us… [laughs]

Sarah: Oh, thank you, how nice! [laughs]

Nate: Well, have a good interview…

Sarah: Later!

WiF: Ok, there’s another great band…

Sarah: Definitely.

WiF: Back to what we were saying, I just wondered, since you’re an ‘ADD band,’ as you’ve said, if you get really anxious to record and record and record.

Sarah: Oh, we want to, but we’re just so poor! If we had money, it would be crazy, the recording level would be out of control.

WiF: But you are planning to record your solo material as well?

Sarah: Yes, I would love to. We’re just looking for the right situation, and money, of course, is always an issue…

WiF: Do you have enough material for a full-length?

Sarah: Yes… I think all the waiting around I’ve done on the labels, with the Happy Hollows, in this scary, scary period, has really frustrated and fueled me—so maybe something good, musically, has come out of all my anxiety over it.

WiF: Do you have any specific plans, as a band, for the rest of the year (besides releasing the album)?

Charlie: Well, everything will revolve around the album, really.

Sarah: We’re definitely going to tour around it.

Charlie: Yeah, and if we sign with a label, the release will probably be delayed until fall, or who knows when…

Sarah: [laughs}

Charlie: So the release of the album pretty much determines everything else that we’ll do. We’ll play in L.A. some more, for sure, and try and play in San Francisco and San Diego. We feel a little saturated here—we love it, be you can’t play in just one city all of the time.

WiF: Yeah, when everyone gets signed and goes on tour, the rest of us will be shuffling around Spaceland and the Echo, all lonely and shrugging our shoulders…

Sarah: Oh, no! [cradles my hand and laughs] You’ll get another generation of bands, we promise! It was the same after the Silversun Pickups got signed: one generation graduated and left town, and a new one took its place. There will always be great new bands.

WiF: [petulantly] I guess…

What will you do after you graduate?

Sarah: Stay pure!

Charlie: [laughs] Purity?

For me, I just want to write music that gets better and better, and stays honest…

Sarah: That’s what I mean. When you deal with the business and the challenges and wondering if anyone like your music, you might start to subconsciously write songs to please others. You’ve got to be careful to not get sucked into that. I just want to stay true to our sound while still growing as musicians and artists.

Band Favorites

Charlie

“Lieutenant”
It was such a challenging song to learn, and it has a very strange structure. That being said, it’s really fun to play, especially when Sarah starts to tap the guitar. I love that. It’s really cathartic to play, too.

“De Lorean”
I like this one because it’s my little ballad, and it’s a kind of anthemic.

Sarah

“Belly of the Whale”
This will be on the new album…it’s my absolute favorite song to play.

“Lieutenant”
I love this song because, during the time that I ‘gave birth’ to both “Whale” and “Lieutenant,” I just felt so creatively tuned-in and connected to the music. I love it!

Rare Tracks

The Happy Hollows were generous enough to allow Web in Front to host three unreleased tracks—two demos and a cut from their upcoming album. The demos for “Tambourine” and “Lieutenant” are edgy, intimate close-ups of the songs in their initial moments, with Negahdari’s intense vocals skipping and trickling over the static starbursts of her guitar, while the full-band version of “Lieutenant” is a swinging churn of pummeling drums countered by Negahdari’s honeyed wail.

Listen to “Tambourine (Demo)”
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Listen to “Lieutenant (Demo)”
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Listen to “Lieutenant”
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May 26, 2008 | Filed Under Exclusive Features, Featured Artist Interviews 

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