Featured Album this Week: “Hail Social” by Hail Social
Happy Valentine’s Day readers! In addition to gorging myself with delicious dark chocolate all day, I’m going to be a bit selfish with this week’s album. I usually reserve the “featured album” post on this blog to help promote unknown artists currently in the hustle, but this album is so good I found it really hard to pass on.
This band is no longer in existence, and hasn’t been for the better part of the last decade, and I recently came across their self-titled project. Needless to say, I was instantly hooked.
Hail Social was a rock band out of Philadelphia, and started their career releasing low budget, self-made EPs at their concerts. They worked hard, built a fan base, and ended up touring with bands like Interpol and The Secret Machine in the mid-2000s. They released their first album (self-titled) in August 2005 with Polyvinyl Records. They fell into obscurity shortly after, and published a random blog post in 2009 saying the band is no longer active and hasn’t been for years. Lead vocalist and songwriter Dayve Hawk now records and releases music under the alias Memory Tapes.
Although Hail Social didn’t last, they put out quite an album. Every song on this self-titled release sounds confident and well-produced. The vocal melodies are very James Mercer (The Shins) at times, which is always a win for me. I’m really digging the guitar riffs, too. They are subtle but important to the structure of each song on the album. An excellent album to add to your indie rock collection.
You can snag a copy of the album (CD +MP3) directly from Polyvinyl for $10, or get the 320kbps, DRM-free MP3s instead for only $5. It’s on iTunes as well for $7, but fuck them, right? Buy direct.
