The DIY ethos of the Elephant 6 Collective is a production influence that underpins the
commanding urgency heard on the more
than half-dozen singles that the group has released to date.
Now, the eyebrow-raising wordplay of the band’s name
extends to the title of Fuckleberry Hinn’s
long-awaited album Neither/Nor (Sept. 1,
Wonderful & Strange Records), a
punny tribute to Smith’s modern
classic Either/Or, a touchstone album for Fuckleberry Hinn’s founding core pair of Øysteins: Øystein Ulvund
and Øystein Megård.
“We started out as a duo in late 2019, with no real
intentions of starting a band,” Megård
says. “After we somehow ended up getting booked to play a gig without really
being a group yet, we gathered a troupe and became one.”
In addition to Megård
(who also performs in The Sideways
and The High Water Marks) and Ulvund, Fuckleberry Hinn now includes Tord
Nyheim Hovde (Lâche) on Bass, Ole Jørgen Kristensen (earth moon transit) on Guitar, and Hallvard Løberg Näsvall (This Daze, Slåppy) on Drums.
Fuckleberry
Hinn’s debut album displays a knack
for many different styles of song, which was decidedly not by design.
“The album varies from quiet singer-songwriter tunes
to noisy punk songs,” Megård
explains. “There’s even a sea shanty.
“We have never had any predetermined course of action.
We thought Fuckleberry Hinn would be
a great name for a punk band when we came up with it years before we even
started making music together.
“But our first song was so mellow and not punk that we quickly decided we would just
make whatever we felt like.”
“Nobody,” the final single prior to the release of Neither/Nor
is an anthem, and perhaps the album’s most memorable track.
“Am I depressed or just lazy
Is my mind playing tricks
Or am I going crazy
And now I’m rambling”
Megård taps into human frailties and failings in universal ways
to great effect on this song. It’s not surprising to find out that it came to
him at a time when we are all vulnerable.
“‘Nobody’
started out as a dream. It really happens, it’s not just a thing McCartney claims! I woke up having
dreamt a song, and after scrambling around, I managed to make a kind-of
comprehensible sketch of the chorus. It took some time later to decode the
recording I made on my phone.”
“Nobody will know, nobody will understand”
That’s how the chorus that arrived that night goes. It’s
a sentiment that everyone has felt at one time or another, and yet somehow, the
finished song makes understanding a lot easier.
Neither/Nor
is the 22-track double-album debut by Norway’s Fuckleberry Hinn, out Sept.
1, 2023 on Wonderful & Strange
Records. The band’s latest single “Nobody” is out now.
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Fuckleberry
Hinn | Links
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