Honyock's unique and drop dead gorgeous "Unlucky #13" is worth betting on

photo by Jesika Gatdula

Unlucky #13, I liked the name of this track even before pushing play as obvious a name it is. I am thinking that California brothers fronted indie rock band Honyock can follow up with a song called Unlucky 2020 for even more obvious reasons. 

But I digress, from the weird and wonderful opening, that feels like ambient percussion, to the drop off into a lush sort of R&B laced psyche art rock thing, Unlucky #13 feels like a dreamy slow dance into surreal rooms full of space and stars. It is truly lovely, the bass is embracing and the acoustic rock segues kill, as do the pretty as hell vocal harmonies. Truly unique and drop dead gorgeous. I bet you will love it too.

Unlucky 13 is from the bands EP "13".

-Robb Donker Curtius













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Named after an archaic Americanism used by their grandfather and inspired by a 70's sound, Honyock is a four-piece band comprised of brothers Mason & Spencer Hoffman, Tyler Wolter and Christian Midthun. Originating in Sacramento, CA, the group relocated to Los Angeles and have opened for the likes of La Luz, The Dodos, Gabriella Cohen, and Surfer Blood.

The #13 EP traces a world-weary picture of the fractured moments and missed opportunities of day-to-day life, woven through songs tinged with an updated nostalgia. It opens with “Sanity of Man,” a short and bitter-sweet musing off of a quote from The Twilight Zone. Mason sings about the sometimes conflicting, and other times complimentary underpinnings of things like love, hate, happiness, sadness, civilization and pandemonium, filtered through a Cars-like arrangement carried by Tyler’s driving bass, Christian’s flanged out drum fills and offset by jangly guitar hooks and whirling synths.

Next track “Unlucky #13” embraces a melancholic feeling that you were somehow born of the wrong moment, or in the wrong family, and have to navigate a world you feel fundamentally ill equipped for. “The Quarry” takes this throughline and injects an element of bombastic defiance. The lyrics are drawn from Spencer’s experience working in a factory over the course of a particularly dull winter, feeling life slipping by. The EP closes on a somber but resilient soul song “World of Mine,” an ode to the witching hour of LA with Riley Geare joining the band on the Fender Rhodes.