Hollow Bodies Watch the People Blur
In our latest Fast Fad profile, Millennial Male’s Vikram “Venom” Ramachandran follows the Seattle rockers to L.A. to see if they can find transcendence in traffic jams.
Watching the people blur.
How many people do you see each day who you will never see again? This is the poetry inside of a regular commute. The subway stops stay the same but the swarm of creatures who “really need to make their 9:30” changes by the day.
Hollow Bodies’ sixth album makes extraordinary music from the mundane. A record of consultants writing slides, Sisyphean lawn-enthusiasts, and nurses using electronic records software. And where-else could they make this paean to the everyday but in the most anonymous city you’ve seen a thousand times before: Los Angeles.
I meet the band at LAX where they take a shuttle to a car rental place. “Audiences are burned out on nostalgia,” says singer Balasubrahmanyan, likely in reference to the band’s previous release, the childhood-mining Indestructible Beat of Merriam Park. “I want our new songs to feel like right now.” When I remind him that, as of right now, we’ve been waiting in line for a rental car for a half hour he replies “Exactly! Standing in line is most of what happens everyday. This is the real life that art should imitate.”
Forty minutes later we ditch the unmoving line and call an Uber.
If your work is stacking up, go ahead and sit on top.
Over the course of five records, critics have defined Hollow Bodies as “project management rock.” Many fans assume the label is a joke, but the band is deadly serious about best practices for shared timelines. “The Beatles would still be together if they’d had doodle polls!” says Balasubrahmanyan.
The lead singer infamously makes the rest of the band fill out timesheets to report on their activities. I watch as Balasubrahmanyan reviews Dewar’s entries from the previous week. “Ok, one hour recording scratch guitar, fifteen minutes emailing with the studio…” He changes the code on a time entry for “noodling” from “song writing” to “business development.”
“The four most important skills any band needs to be great are scheduling, transparent budgeting, and clear roles and responsibilities,” says Balasubrahmanyan.
“What's the fourth?” I ask
“Uh, like art. Or whatever.”
Call it an instinct of light to brighten the corners of this old room.
The band convenes at the rental home of Josh “L.A.” Lindgren, a new arrival to the Hollywood Hills. Returning to the drums after the success of their previous record, Lindgren assures the group that he’ll be able to record this weekend but probably needs to get a head start on emails Sunday night.
This batch of songs came to the band quickly and they are recording just shy of seven months since their last time in the studio. The songs feel like a buoyant extension of Merriam’s Park jangling rock. This time around, the tempos are faster and the harmonies brighter. The band seems invigorated from playing together more frequently after a long pandemic.
I ask Hollow Bodies if they consider this an L.A. record and great debate ensues. The band cannot decide if an L.A. record is like a Warren Zevon album or a Red Hot Chili Peppers album. The only thing they can agree on is that flying into L.A. to record and then flying back to smaller, colder cities is actually a very L.A. thing to do.
MooseCat studio art.
This guy bought a muscle car and he took his clothes off to drive to the sea.
After recording drums at MooseCat Studios from 11am to 5pm, the band takes a break to visit clothing stores in the surrounding Wilshire Vista neighborhood. Balasubrahmanyan claims that he needs to wear more scarves to build his brand as the “business-casual Stevie Ray Vaughn.”
The band talks about the themes of the record. Most of the songs are character studies and each band member interprets them differently. Dewar says that “Hold on to Midnight”, a simmering prog rock tune with a latin-pop shuffle, is about an office worker having a mental breakdown.
“Set of It All” is an anthem for admins, following a daily commuter who wonders why their dreary bus window reflects back on them like a mirror.
When I mention to the band that the record has a recurring theme of people reckoning with the emptiness of lives devoted to white collar jobs, Balasubrahmanyan balks.
“These aren’t sad songs! These characters just haven’t learned to dream in PowerPoint yet.”
Call me when we forget this was the start of our lives.
My favorite moment on the album comes on the lead single, “Battery Park Wallflower.” At 1:11 into the song to be precise. When Molly goes “ahhhh--ooooo.”
The band added Molly Michal as a full-time member for this record, hoping to incorporate her harmonies (which shone on on past standouts “One of Us Writes” and “Born in Kentucky”) across a full set of songs. You can feel the difference on “Battery Park,” a powerpop gem that looks at love in the age of distraction, ticking off all the things on your to-do list before you can get to what really matters.
The band members are all in their late 30s/early 40s, and at this point in their lives they live in three different cities. The father of a young child, Dewar recorded most of the guitar parts for the album while his son napped.
Balasubrahmanyan seems to relish the logistical challenge of coordinating across time zones. He schedules cross-country practices, books hourly rehearsal spaces, and arranges travel details while balancing his day job as a communications consultant. He proudly shows me a planning spreadsheet that consists entirely of hyperlinks to other spreadsheets.
I ask Balasubrahmanyan if he sees the band as a hobby. He replies that Hollow Bodies is a “workstream with annual reporting requirements.”
He argues that his full-time job has taught him more relevant skills to be in a rock band than practicing an instrument ever could. Rock and roll, in his telling, is the ability to coordinate schedules and meet project milestones. Anyone can write a song; it takes an artist to manage the logistics of recording and releasing it.
I don’t really agree. I ask he if sees any irony in how Hollow Bodies have had to act more and more like a traditional Fortune 500 business to stay an indie band.
“Irony?” Balasubrahmanyan looks at me with skepticism. “That brand space is more for right wing influencers.”
Dewar records guitar parts while his child sleeps.
Gather round for a melody, our story’s just begun.
I can identify the rock flutist immediately—he wears socks in Birkenstocks and his long hair partially covers the Jurassic Park logo on his T-shirt. Hollow Bodies are recording overdubs for the album in Chicago and need a specialist to add woodwinds to “Bronze,” the Led Zepplin-esque fairy tale that will close the record.
To guide his playing, the flutist asks what the song is about.
“There’s untapped market potential for a Jethro Tull revival” says Balasubrahmanyan.
“Uh-huh.”
“The song is a morality play,” I say. “In the song a gladiator wins a match and achieves great fame, but he becomes obsessed with his image as a winner. He casts aside all the friends that remind him of his fallibility until he is completely alone. In an album about the futility of careers, it’s a statement about how a job has never been able to provide a full meaning to life.”
“Dude,” says the flutist.
He lights a scented candle and proceeds to rip a soaring solo, closing another spectacular record with an ethereal audio filigree.
The notes blur with grace. And the people? Well, what do you see?
About the Author
Vikram “Venom” Ramachandran is a fictional rock critic and Bonobos influencer for Millennial Male magazine. He purchased a vinyl reissue of Transatlanticism for both the 10 year and 20 year anniversaries.
Album Credits and Thanks
Album Credits
Vocals/Lyrics/Guitar: Anand Balasubrahmanyan
Drums: Josh Lindgren
Guitars/Bass/Synths/Organ/Electric Piano/Mellotron/Loops+Samples/Mandolin/ Electric Kalimba/ Tambourine/ Backing Vocals: Chris Dewar
Vocals/Electric Piano*/Lyrics: Molly Michal
Aux Percussion/Synths**/ Bass***: Ryan “Nails” Leyva
Flute: Erik Novack
* Set of It All, Instinct, Battery Park Wallflower and Almanac
** Battery Park Wallflower
*** Once Twice
Drums Engineered and tracked at: Mike Post (MooseCat Recording), Los Angeles, CA
Vocals Recorded at: Andrew Christopoulos (Sound Vault Studios) Chicago, IL
Mixed and Additional Vocal Engineering: Ryan “Nails” Leyva (Exex Studios) Seattle, WA
Mastered: Ed Brooks (Resonant Mastering)
Album Artwork: Anand Balasubrahmanyan and Chris Dewar
Special Thanks
Nora Coghlan
Ross Cavanaugh
Natalie Roman
Margaret Erickson
Graig Markel
Pat Chou
Alex Korn
Marie Clifford
Dedicated to the memory of Bruce Ransom and Neil Cavanaugh.
Recorded
March 2023 - October 2023
