Cut Off Your Hands "Hollow" 2011

...You & I reached No.21 on the NZ Album Chart and received positive reviews locally and abroad – Spin magazine calling it an “impressive debut, a tsunami of galloping rhythms, lightning-charged guitar lines, and choruses that immediately infect your brain”. Despite the glowing outcome, Sixsevenine pulled out because of the lack of radio singles, leaving the band in a dead end with the UK. “We had a label that wanted us to be the Kaiser Chiefs or something, so they threw this shit on the wall – and then when it doesn’t stick they freak out!”..
...Eventually, they moved to the USA where they continued their streak of live shows, driving the length of the country twice and clocking up over 150 headline and festival shows in a year. By the end of 2008 guitarist Michael Ramirez decided to leave the band, although he returned to fill in for his own replacement, ex-Collapsing Cities guitarist Jonathan Lee, for a number of Australasian gigs. Hearing deterioration led drummer Brent Harris to stop playing and also head home six months later. Elroy Finn, the youngest son of Neil Finn, stepped up to the drum stool so touring could continue. Harris eventually made a return to the stage, with his hearing loss moderately under control. In 2011 the band set out to record their second album. They previously attempted to record it in Sydney at the end of 2009 but decided to put it on the backburner. With the aid of a NZ On Air album grant received in August 2009, Hollow was recorded in the same location as their first EP – the Harris family home. All tracks were recorded live within a week, with Peter Wood engineering and the band producing. “We kind of deliberately did this record here and even our label (Inertia) and management (Speak N Spell), who are based in Australia, we didn’t want them here. ‘This is our thing, let’s do it our way.’” Hollow was released in August 2011 through Frenchkiss and Speak N Spell Records and was supported with a tour of New Zealand and Australia. The band was mostly inactive over the following five years, though it played the odd show (most notably supporting Foals in Auckland in 2013). In the meantime, Phillip Hadfield had been playing bass in She’s So Rad, so it was no surprise that that the band’s singer (and experienced producer) Jeremy Toy was brought on board when COYH came back together in 2016. ‘Hate Somebody’ was released prior to a headline slot at the Other’s Way Festival that year. The song described Johnston’s experience watching new residents in his suburb of Grey Lynn mistreating his neighbours who had been there for decades. The theme must have struck a chord, since the track clocked up nearly half-a-million streams (and was accompanied by a video by internationally successful director, Joel Kefali). In 2017, the band made its fourth appearance at Laneway Festival, which was promoted with the release of another new single - the eminently danceable ‘Higher Lows and Lower Highs.’- audioculture

trax:
01 You Should Do Better 02 Nausea 03 By Your Side 04 Hollowed out 05 Oh Hell 06 All It Takes 07 Fooling no One 08 Down and out 09 Buried
…served by Gaius…