The son of Mumbaikas, born in Massachusetes The One AM Radio is Hrishikesh Hirway. Hirway began recording himself (as he still does) while a student at Yale in 1999. Already a producer (label mate Peter Walker’s upcoming) and licensing his songs - “What You Gave Away (alias Remix)" from his 2005 record On the Shore of the Wide World to ‘youthful, sporty’ advertising Pontiac (Moby would be proud) - Hirway recently signed to Dangerbird Records (Silversun Pickups, La Rocca). This Too Will Pass is his first release on the label - the follow-up to his critically acclaimed (Pitchfork likey) 2004 album A Name Writ In Water - and The One AM Radio’s third full-length album.
Now a resident of Los Angeles, Hirway – a drummer since fifteen - hasn’t forgotten Massachusetts’ Chilly Scenes Of Winter evident in his penchant for rompler-style wilted, minimalism. His songs (“Mercury”, “Where I’m Headed”, “The Echoing Airport”) cry out for a sonically lush “California Dreamin’” full drum set. Although used in “Lest I Forget”, the beats still come across as DnB light - “Our Fall Apart” (“Soul Meets Body”) Seth Cohen has a new favorite band. With Pikulesque strings throughout - although “Cast Away” is a little less Nirvana Unplugged and a little more Bush’s “Glycerin” - the crunkest track of This Too Will Pass with its young Elliott “Folk Is A Defined Genre – I’m Not Folk” Smith quality is “In The Time We’ve Got”. “The Harvest”, too has Either/Or characteristics and features Beach Boys-style harmonizing. “Lest I Forget” builds to a, fleeting as it is, Phil Spector owing Wall Of Sound, as does the Sonic Youth noise art of “Fires”.
Moby circa Play on heroin meets Virgin Suicides’ Air “Playground Love” – the vibraphone version (“You Can Still Run”, “A Brittle Filament”), Hirway’s The One AM Radio aesthetic is similar in tone to the Sofia Coppola film: a house burning peacefully in the night (This Too Will Pass’ album artwork), the innocent late night game on the football field between old friends (in The One AM Radio’s video for “Witness” - A Name Writ In Water). “Coming Back” and “Your Name” exemplify Hirway’s modest, self-effacing Shins-style prose (struggling small town lesbians, anyone?) – This Too Will Pass is the musical embodiment of the scene in Wonder Boys, when depressive naïf James Leer (Toby Maguire) has read his latest brilliant, despondent fictional narrative aloud to his Advanced Writers' Workshop classmates. His professor Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas) asks a student, Howard (Yusuf Gatewood) for feedback. Says Howard, “(I hated it.) His stories make me want to kill myself.” |