"This is not a hangover / Just the rattle / Of our heads colliding / The sun’s up, I’m driving..."
"Polar Pop" by five piece Phoenix, Arizona based Herbert Walker is full of artful intricacies. When I was little and growing up in a Dutch Indonesian household I would marvel at these crazy Indo wall carvings. The longer you would stare at them you would see more things. This came to mind listening to "Polar Pop" because the beautifully chill and artful song as a whole is comprised of this dense musicality expressed with patterned guitar licks that flutter in Steve Howe-ian ways (a reference to the 70's progressive rock band YES) and with HW's exquisite blend of indie rock, lounge punk, pop, jazz and more I feel a glorious sense of different decades blending, of art and pop music as a convergence of now and what came before instead of a push of indie tropes that will mark their art in some point of time.
Herbert Walker call what they do as "blue collar chamber pop" which , I suppose, is a fair enough descriptor but when I hear the bass and drums dance, the organ-esque keys, luscious guitar, horns sounds, stair stepping cadences and vocal lounge punk vox it just doesn't seem like a broad enough description. Like those crazy intricate Indonesian wood carvings Herbert Walker's sound feels contextually deep.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
https://www.facebook.com/herbertwalkerband
https://herbertwalker.bandcamp.com/album/on-flat-earth
https://herbert-walker.com/
https://www.instagram.com/herbertwalkerforever/
https://soundcloud.com/herbertwalkers
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1KYmFpXuH97kvIe5rHOtVC
We get by with a little help from our friends
Herbert Walker, Phoenix Arizona, 5 piece, indie rock, jazz, lounge punk, freak folk, blendo rock, "Polar Pop", artful, progressive, no indie tropes, blue collar chamber pop,
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