After seven different releases of its debut album, you’d
think orchestral country-folk group Hem would have given up on
music.
But the band hasn’t, and a few false starts only paved the
way for its current prolificacy.
Hem will be performing tonight at the Knitting Factory, wrapping
up promotion of its third full-length album, “No Word from
Tom,” and giving audiences a taste of its forthcoming
September release.
Quite impressive for a band that relied on an advertisement in
The Village Voice to find a singer.
“Hem was always a dream project. It was always what I was
going to do once I started my life,” songwriter Dan Messe
said. “I was always waiting for a place to begin. Then I had
one really bad year where I lost everything and said that my life
is going to begin now.”
And indeed it did. Teaming up with Gary Maurer, Steve Curtis and
Sally Ellyson, the one and only captivating voice to respond to the
ad, Hem released “Rabbit Songs” in 2001.
The album was later picked up by Dreamworks Records in 2003 but
the label collapsed, leaving the band with possession of its music
and not much else.
The music, though, was enough.
Most of the band’s material begins with a foundation of
simple repetitious themes, like lightly descending piano triplets
or an unfolding guitar lick. Then the instrumentation begins to
layer over the top, creating a sound that is lush, emotional and
utterly beautiful.
It’s what Messe describes as “very arranged
orchestral chamber folk and haunted lullabies,” which when
combined with Ellyson’s airy, enchanting voice come to act
both as a candid purging of pain and a dreamlike escape from
it.
“It’s a human need. We all suffer from the duality
of being stuck in the past … and at the same time, there’s
a whole other side to it with this idea of home,” Messe
said.
“Those are the things that keep me alive. If there was one
theme in all our music it’s trying to find comfort … and
for me that’s the most important (element) that songs have
““ the ability to comfort.”
“No Word from Tom” is like a follow up to the
band’s 2004 EP “Birds, Beasts & Flowers,”
which was recorded in collaboration with the Autumn Defense. Both
the EP and the new release compile demos of unreleased tracks as
well as covers and live versions of older songs, allowing fans to
see how much the songs can change from the studio to the stage.
The band translates the songs’ comforting quality to its
performances but the new versions often adopt a fresh appeal due
both to the organic evolution of the musical themes and lyrics as
well as the changing ensemble onstage.
“It’s a way for us to experiment with sounds and the
studio and new ways of recording, and also a way to play around
without the pressure of a release … and we just fell in love with
the process (while recording the EP),” Messe said.
“We just wanted to open up our process to people ““
how arrangements change over time, how songs change over
time.”
The perpetual alterations to the songs testify to Hem’s
folk-music groundwork. But reaching back to influences that range
from Copeland to Gershwin to the Carter Family and Bill Monroe, Hem
also incorporates inflections from across the musical spectrum to
its aesthetic, including bluegrass and a prominent orchestral
element.
Together with the anecdotal, poignant lyrics, Hem has developed
a sound with each album that is resilient even amid an almost
swelling sadness.
“A lot of the songs are about being stuck,” Messe
said. “But in writing songs we become unstuck. That’s
the amazing thing about art.”
Hem’s music (as well as the story behind it) is
incomparable to a lot of music released these days, which can be
dangerous in an industry more focused on selling
already-popularized sounds than working to pioneer new trends.
But fortunately in Hem’s case, it has instead culminated
in a growing fan base, three albums with a fourth on the way, and a
sound that continually thrives in the face of whatever hurdles
might come its way.
“I feel that good music will always get heard. I
didn’t used to trust that but now I really believe that if
you do something good, people will want to hear it,” Messe
said.
“(The music business aspect) doesn’t really affect
us. We wall ourselves off from all the noise and just keep making
music.”