Hem have laid claim to their own unique sound centred on the ethereal voice of Sally Ellyson, writes Tony Clayton-Lea
'Vintage Americana" might not have the same ring as "cutting-edge rock", but in the hands of Hem it's a style of music that is often more vital than anything NME hypes as being this week's newest Saviour of Music.
Hem - an urbane octet from Brooklyn, whose new album, Eveningland, looks destined to be nestling in the Top 10 Best Albums of the Year lists next December - first came to our attention three years ago, when their debut album, Rabbit Songs, slipped out of the traps and entranced with its blend of will-o-the-wisp tunes and the sylph-like vocals of Sally Ellyson. It might sound naff to say this, but the songs seemed to have travelled through time from the early 1900s, picking up filaments of pop along the way, resulting in an aural equivalent of those novelty framed photographs where modern-day families dress up in Victorian clothes: it seems genuinely old-time on first glance, but underneath the trouser legs and outline of the outfits you can see runners and jeans peeking through. What makes Hem different from the fakery of the photos is the depth, layering and emotional quality of their songs.
"With Rabbit Songs, the material was definitely about getting over some rotten things in life such as heartache, the past, whatever," says Hem's main songwriter Dan Messé, currently ensconced in his Brooklyn studio prior to embarking on a UK and Irish tour in early March. "But so much wonderful stuff happened between Rabbit Songs and Eveningland that the inspiration for the songs are different. Some of the band got married, I became a father - life was good."
So how can anyone write miserable songs at a time in life when dreams are coming true? "From the record title down, there's comfort in the material. Life can be very difficult, of course, but I find that I write music in order to create comfort in life. If I write a beautiful enough song and have our singer, Sally, perform it, when I listen to it I feel safe and comfortable. Essentially, that's what I want the listener to experience."
HEM STANDS ON its head the theory that to achieve something akin to a musical epiphany all the time one must be provocative, discordant or dissonant. "Unrest is prevalent enough, don't you think? It isn't hard to find that in music - life is hard and finding discomfort is easy to do. Sometimes, you have to look a little harder to find the beauty."
While the creative core of the band remains the songwriting trio of Messé, Steve Curtis and Gary Maurer, the listening experience revolves around the instrumentation (which includes, amid the basics of guitars and drums, mandolin, banjo, glockenspiel and celeste) and the voice of Sally Ellyson (which includes, to the exclusion of all else, the kind of simplicity, truth and beauty that is non-existent in most current music).
Ellyson's entry into Hem was unusual, to say the least. Totally unknown to Messé, Curtis and Maurer prior to audition, she was, in Messé's words, "a hobbyist singer". "She had never sung in front of people, on stage, in any way," Messé explains, "but her friends would say she had a great voice and that she should do something with it. By the time she had answered our Village Voice ad for a vocalist, we had almost given up hope. Loads of people answered the ad and each had said the same thing - we're not really singers, but we'd like to give it a try." By the time Sally auditioned - which was singing a lullaby into an answering machine - Messé and co were expecting nothing of any consequence. "All of a sudden this disembodied voice came along," remarks Messé, "and it epitomised everything I wanted to do artistically; it was such a perfect fit. We had almost given up - the original idea for Rabbit Songs was to have a different singer for each track, but when Sally came along all the other voices became superfluous." Messé states that Ellyson's voice is so integral to the sound of Hem that if she left the band it would cease to exist.
"There are three songwriters in the band, but the unifying element of our material is Sally's voice; we're all writing songs for her to sing. Her voice embodies the maternal approach to the way the music is being expressed; it's as if they're being sung to a child, which ties in with part of Hem's approach to explore themes of family. I genuinely think if any other person were to sing the songs they would not be as powerful."
For a band that started out in the late 1990s as a recording studio project only, the growth and moderate success of Hem is testament to the faith invested in the creative process. Rabbit Songs and Ellyson's voice on it now sound virtually demure compared to the sweeping cinematic confidence of Eveningland. The songs might rely on simpler constructs from simpler times ("Our inability to break free from the past is something of a metaphor for Hem," says Messé. "In fact, we're in love with it") but the results are regularly awe inspiring.
THE BAND'S BUSINESS plans might have been blighted in the past with an all too brief tenure on the ill-fated Dreamworks label, but as they are now signed to Rounder in America (EMI/Liberty for the rest of the world) they envisage a rosy, relatively stress-free future.
"Record companies have great faith in the music we make," says Messé without a hint of cynicism. "All we've received is support - no one has mentioned record sales to us. We've been incredibly fortunate.
"Yes, it's a struggle to keep an eight-piece band together. Sometimes we hang on by the skin of our teeth, but as long as we can work and keep doing what we're doing we'll be okay. It's worked so far."
Hem play the Sugar Club, Dublin, on Thursday, March 3rd; Cyprus Avenue, Cork, March 4th; and Roisin Dubh, Galway, March 5th. Eveningland is currently on release. www.eveningland.com