Meow Meow

Out Hud makes careening dance music. A watery swathe of pedals and bass pushes their guitars forth, always in a forward, echoing motion, as if their pretty melodies are amplified through a megaphone and blown across a field. Last year's full-length, S.T.R.E.E.T. D.A.D. (Kranky), fonks it in a ghostly style, sending dub-warm guitars in waves over a font of drum machine, cellos, and bass. They don't ignore their lineage; guitarist Nic Offer, also of !!!, has said the band is consciously paying homage to a variety of Black musics by referencing a well of electro, disco, funk, hiphop, and dub reggae, as well as the avant-garde.

"I think that we've always listened to dance music," comments cellist Molly Schnick, "but when we moved to New York (from Sacramento), we started listening to a lot of early disco and house music. There was such a huge club scene in New York in the early '80s--all the Paradise Garage stuff and early techno--they play club classics on oldies stations. It was a type of music I had never really heard before, and it really opened this whole new world. But we're not trying to repeat anything."

Reference points are patched in and heavily affected, keeping Out Hud's forward-thinking music linear yet ephemeral. So ephemeral, in fact, that after listening to S.T.R.E.E.T D.A.D. voraciously upon its release and shelving it until this interview, I realized that I'd been subconsciously imagining their music as being fully electronic, even though they're a live band and most of their instrumentation is computer-free.

"It's funny you say that," responds Schnick (alumni of Tourettes, a favorite punk band of mine). "Recently, I was listening to a lot of CDs I hadn't listened to in a long time, like Aphex Twin, and I was wondering if that's how our music comes across, or if it sounds warmer than that. Half of S.T.R.E.E.T. D.A.D has real drums on it and half is electronic; the next record will have mostly drum machine and more samples (of ourselves), so I guess we are somewhat electronic."

Before moving to New York, Out Hud existed on the West Coast punk circuit for four years, and it took six for them to release an actual full-length. Schnick promises the wait won't be as long next time around. "We're just kinda perfectionists!"