Hey Lover

Hovercraft Records

Substance. Style. For Portland’s Hey Lover, it’s not a question of whether or not there is substance to their music, because there most definitely is. And it doesn’t appear that any particular style sways their raw-throated output. What’s clear is that in spite of the little boxes everyone is so fond of compartmentalizing every molecule of music within, Hey Lover probably won’t pay attention.

This is to their distinct advantage when considering the majesty of the band’s third album, Sinking Ships. Following their ballyhooed self-titled debut in 2007, and their equally scorching 2011 LP Tennessee, husband-wife duo Justin Varga and Terah Beth Baltzer Varga leveled up for Sinking Ships by adding longtime friend, fan and head of their label (Portland’s Hovercraft Records) Tim Janchar into the mix on bass.

As a trio, the band has been performing shows in Portland and port towns all over the Pacific Northwest since 2013, slowly folding in a refocused prism of their raw earlier work. The band’s debut ushered in exciting promise, exhibiting an unabashed explosion of garage-punk abandon, with Justin’s jangly guitar seizures and squeaky melodies crashing into Terah Beth’s poised, motorik drumming and smart harmonies. The band was summarily voted as one of Portland’s best new bands by Willamette Week in 2007.

“We were just trying to put a couple chords together and make it over a minute without someone completely destroying the equipment,” explains Justin. “It was sort of just trying to learn how to write songs with an electric guitar. That was the raw sound that came out of us.”

Hey Lover’s second album Tennessee was a slightly more subdued effort, finding Justin and Terah Beth experimenting more with a ‘60s pop influence than the ferocity of their punky debut. But even during the writing and recording of Tennessee—a bit of homage to the Knoxville
they moved to Portland from in 2004—Justin and Terah Beth identified a rut.

“It definitely hit a point where we were playing less and were less interested in it,” says Justin. “When the second record was released, we were trying to bang out those songs for a long time, and it wasn’t really energetic. Making that record energized us again for a little while, but it tapered off quickly.”

Enter Tim Janchar.

“My brother was jealous,” quips Janchar. “He always wanted to play bass in Hey Lover. Everybody wanted to.”

“After Tennessee was recorded, I wasn’t getting as excited about the new songs,” says Terah Beth “but when Tim joined the band, he brought optimism to every new song being like ‘That’s awesome!’ to everything, bringing that shot of good energy we needed.”

Stripping down their jangly oeuvre even further for Sinking Ships, the trio hones in on a peppy pop-punk realm on highly addictive tracks like opener “I Wanna Be With You.” Anchored by the newly introduced low-end, the husk of Hey Lover’s sensibilities as songwriters has been given a boost.

“It took us a while just to learn how to play with a bass,” says Justin. “It shook everything up. I didn’t realize how different it would be. We just thought, we’ve got these songs, we’ll grab a bass player and just move along. But it changes everything.”

As evidence, songs like the barebones rhythm-driven “Ahhh” benefit greatly from the injection of Janchar’s buoyant bass line. Songs like “Ahhh”—a satirical panorama of a tune that aims a middle finger at the omnipresence of mass shootings—highlight Justin’s acute songwriting scope, applying as he does a bit of a magnifying glass to the minutiae of life’s tragedies, as well as its triumphs. Songs like the raucous “Problem” highlight the fact that although Hey Lover has embraced its cuddlier side in certain respects, their caustic underbelly remains a rowdy facet of their musical disposition.

“After the first record we got thrown directly into this garage-rock thing,” says Justin. “I like garage-rock, but we have a lot of influences and I was definitely trying to write songs that showed a different side. Maybe part of that was irking me. I wanted to do something that showed maybe a softer or little more melodic side.”

Hey Lover initially entered the studio shortly after Janchar joined the band. Those sessions proved cumbersome enough that the band chose to back out and give the newly trio-ed project an incubation period. Through fellow Portlanders Psychomagic, Hey Lover was linked in with Evan “Maus” Mersky at Red Lantern Studios, where they cut Sinking Ships in a matter of a week.

Embodying the kind of artistic immersion that helped define the Pacific Northwest underground rock scenes of yore, Hey Lover dabble not only in music, but the careful presentation of their craft through videos, art shows, photography and more. The proof is in a spate of as-yet-unreleased new videos for tracks off of Sinking Ships, including a Brett Roberts-directed tour piece for the peppy road-punk opus “I’ve Got a Car.” Roberts previously directed videos for Hey Lover’s “Heads in a Hole” and “Piranha” from Tennessee.

Furthering the nautical themes of the record, the band’s good friend and revered Seattle-based artist Pat Moriarity collaborated with Hey Lover to create the vacation cutout shot that graces the album’s front and back cover and inside gatefold.

Sinking Ships is officially released in early 2016 on Janchar’s Hovercraft Records. In October and November 2015, Hey Lover heads overseas for a return to Europe, as well as their first trek to Iceland. 2016 will see the band criss-crossing the U.S., bee-lining for your favorite vacation cutouts along the way.