Noel Heroux has plans well beyond “Momo.”
If you go
Hooray for Earth, with The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Surfer Blood
Where: Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW
When: 8 p.m. Wednesday
Info: Sold out at press time; 202-667-4490; blackcatdc.com
Hooray for Earth, Heroux’s band, released the EP earlier this year and critics have praised its hard charging guitar work, luminous synth sounds and overall big, bold melodies. “I’m getting everything together for our full-length release,” Heroux said. “I’m using my own sounds and am doing a lot of editing and rerecording things on tapes. Of course I’ve made a huge mess of my room but it’s all really coming together … I just love melodies and chord progressions.”
That passion for music is what fueled Heroux to form the band in 2005 and self-release a full-length, self-titled album in 2006. Despite a brief hiatus in 2007, the group soon reformed and began recording. Those tunes were eventually the songs on the EP “Momo,” which was selected as a digital download on eMusic.
The success of the recording led to the band’s current tour and soon-to-be full-length album.
“We are very happy being on this tour; it’s huge,” he said. “We are having too much fun. The reception has been great, awesome.”
Credit Heroux’s musical goal of wanting to create a new sound and establish a solid direction in which to take the band.
“Now that we have a proper release of (“Momo”) and a new release coming up, it’s awesome and limitless,” he said.
Hooray for Earth was built the old fashioned way through touring and grassroots fan building. Although the band played SXSW music festival in 2006, the band’s first tours were built more friend’s parties and informal events than music clubs.
“The band is full of young dudes but we’ve gotten a lot of experience in the past year,” he said. “Basically what you learn is how to roll with it and how to make the best music you can.”
Heroux’s writing style is always developing, which adds a lot to the freshness of the band’s music.
His process is such that once he has an idea for a song he has to “run to the computer and lay everything down all at once. If I don’t have the opportunity to do that I will sing a bunch of melodies into a recorder.”
Although the melodies come first, lyrics follow in much the same way, as almost a stream of consciousness.
“I record all of the demos and by that time they’re pretty thought out. They [often] sound much the same as the final versions,” he said. “They are sloppy though. When I give them to the other guy and we get together and [determine] how to play all the parts, that’s when it really becomes a song.”
