Hal - 'I Sat Down' (Rough Trade)
2/5
By: Michael Lewin
Perhaps there is some weird connection between Ireland and the West Coast. If anybody has any definite theories, let us know. It's pretty baffling why these sunshine pop LSD bands keep appearing from a grey, vaguely miserable little island. Maybe it's something to do with that, maybe it's a peak of escapism, to dream of driving along some huge, empty freeway in a late 60's road movie - wind tousling your hair, shades, all that - on your way to trip your tits off round a camp fire on a beach at night with Jeff Beck. It's a pretty appealing image, we'll grant you. It's probably why all these kids think they have to evoke it in song for us, share with us what it feels like to be an orange basking in the sun.
'I sat down,' Hal cry to us on their latest single from the eponymous debut, everything 'a million miles away' and such other slightly empty yet pleasant clichés impressing on us that feeling of calm, slightly lovely melancholy where stuff's just quite peaceful and nice, a hint of romance past, perhaps, without urgency.
Which is just great. For them. The listener doesn't have a chance to achieve the same reflection Hal have, though, and that's how they fail. Where, say, like-minded-though-a-million-times-better touring partners the 'Numbers win out through sheer simplicity and whimsy (and, ahem, magic), Hal lose because of more ambitious arrangements that prevent you from joining them and experiencing that reflection. There are just too many dynamic breaks and shifts, with a pluck of a mandolin here, strings swirly-swirl there, a bit of jarring stop-start percussion, before the chorus rises with all those elements and some we-really-really-really-want-to-be-the-Beach-Boys vocal harmonies. Hal can't decide quite where the hook is, and without the, well, genius of a Brian Wilson or wilful, beautiful eclecticism of the Arcade Fire or Architecture in Helsinki, there isn't one. The sound isn't confusing, it's just cluttered and as a result uninclusive. So while they're having their road movie/beach party trip, we're standing on the interstate, hopeful thumb in the air as we here them coming up the road. Problem is, they don't stop for us.
Artists in this article: Hal
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