"I don’t know how to be good / When you’re around / Shut your mouth / I’m not finished yet / Shut your mouth / I’m not finished yet..."
The opaque tensions, sinewy guitar lines and pained storytelling of "Happy We Try" by the cut and cauterized The Kerosene Hours, the alternative dark rock, multimedia project of LA based hyphenate renaissance man Aaron Silverstein, stretches out in front of you like an endless road traversed when things feel sideways. Every single time I write about The Kerosene Hours ( conceptually defined by Silverstein as "the hours between midnight and 4 a.m. — that strange pocket of time that exists between real life and someone else’s dream, a time when everything is a shade of neon red, lonely blue, or sickly green, a time when anything and everything can happen"), I bristle with anticipation and prepare myself to be taken elsewhere, likely to dark diaristic places where bruises may turn into midnight madness and where longing itself will be a magic elixir that ends up being the antidote that saves you.
"Happy We Try" whether birthed from improvisational fate or built out of emotional matchsticks gets under your skin. Silverstein has a way of creating emotional sparseness and builds on top of this nakedness of guitar, bass, beat and his absolutely magnetic vocal countenance (I love the emotional textures, layers of each word, the warble and throw of his voice) until something builds or cracks the code of the song sometimes in a crippling way. On this track, the synth lines that run through the chorus / main refrain absolutely kills me, makes a rash of goosebumps skate across my skin.
LINER NOTES (bracketed):
[You know how some things are just doomed to fail? Like, no matter how much we want them to work, or how good our intentions are, or how much we kick, and scream, and cry, and rage against the universe, some things and some people just don't work out. This song is about how overwhelming that feeling is, and how eventually we learn to take solace in knowing we gave it our best shot. Life is hard and yeah, this might be pathetic, but sometimes let's just but happy we try. - The Kerosene Hours]
It is often the case that talented artists will possess talent in other arts and this is exactly the case with Aaron Silverstein. Having been involved with film (in various ways) in the past, this renaissance man has put blood, sweat and neon tears into crafting his own film. His debut feature, "The Infinite Husk," which he wrote, directed, produced, edited, and scored will premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March 2025.
Much respect, brother.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
https://soundcloud.com/thekerosenehours
https://open.spotify.com/artist/6ej9Jf3YxUxT5iDskCJV4o
https://www.instagram.com/thekerosenehours/
https://www.thekerosenehours.com/
The Kerosene Hours are the hours between midnight and 4 a.m. — that strange pocket of time that exists between real life and someone else’s dream, a time when everything is a shade of neon red, lonely blue, or sickly green, a time when anything and everything can happen. The Kerosene Hours is also the alt/dark rock, multimedia project of LA-based creative Aaron Silverstein.
Silverstein released his first EP as the Kerosene Hours, titled "The King of Leaving," in the summer of 2019. His second EP, "Desperate Perilous Virtue" followed later that November. His debut album, “Fantasy Ultra,” was released in 2022. The album and the accompanying visuals are a meditation on the inherent insanity of suburban life viewed through the lens of the darkest fantasies we keep hidden from the outside world — Who do we want to be? Who do we think we are? Who are we really?
The follow-up to Fantasy Ultra was an EP of unreleased tracks that were written around the time of album. That EP, titled “Plagues of the Cinematic,” was released in November 2022. In September of 2023, Silverstein released an instrumental album called "Sleepers I: Body in the House," which is the first in a trilogy of albums that will slowly trickle out over the next few years.
His first proper guitar/drums/vocals-based music in over a year is slated for released in early 2025 with the lead single "Happy We try" scheduled for release in late January.
His debut feature film, "The Infinite Husk," which he wrote, directed, produced, edited, and scored will premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March 2025.
Silverstein was born and raised in Los Angeles and when not making music or working with brands as a Creative Director, he spends much of his sunlight hours working as a member of the WGA. Silverstein has had the pleasure of working with nationally and globally recognized brands such as Universal Entertainment, Red Bull, and Boxed, Water and his music was featured in “Behind the Try: A Try Guys Documentary,” chronicling the lives of the group after their departure from Buzzfeed.
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