Hello Mary: In her essay “On Keeping a Notebook,” Joan Didion writes about documenting the everyday, unexceptional occurrences that make up a life. The point is to remember, in her words: “How it felt to be me.” Notice that, in Didion’s view, a notebook doesn’t chronicle how it feels, but rather how it felt, and this distinction matters, because time passes, feelings change, our memories solidify or they slip away if we’re not paying attention.
Ask the Brooklyn-based Hello Mary what their eponymous debut album is about, and they’ll pause for a long while before responding, not because they’re unsure, but because the answer seems so ordinary, so mundane. “This might sound vague,” drummer/vocalist Stella Wave warns, “but to me, this album is about accepting the state of things as they are at a given moment, whether it’s your relationship to another person or the world around you.” Pinpointing an individual thought pattern, or resounding theme, risks flattening the trio, who write music and lyrics in tandem, knotting their perspectives together into a singular consciousness. “We collaborate on everything,” bassist Mikaela Oppenheimer says, “from our lyrics to guitar parts and even bass and drums sometimes.”
For a fledgling band, Hello Mary has enviable range, flitting between rock stylings with the ease of studied musicians. They’ve been doing this for a long time, albeit in dorm rooms and the privacy of their parents’ homes, but now they’re offering the product of hours of intimate, synergistic collaboration to the world. Hello Mary abolishes the individual in favor of collective catharsis, and though its singular meaning eludes the band for the time being, decades on it will articulate the most elusive feeling: “How it felt to be us.”
Bleary Eyed was formed in 2015 by frontman Nathaniel Salfi (guitar & vocals), now joined by Margot Whipps (bass & vocals), Pax Martyn (guitar), & Charlie Libby Watt (drums). Since their inception in the DIY scenes of DC and Philadelphia respectively, the band has taken many artistic turns. Through that experimentation, they’ve had time to grow into the sound they were always meant to make, filling a unique space in the shoegaze genre with their sample-heavy hazey computer pop atmosphere. The band presents both a positive yet outside energy with relatable lyrics with stacked harmonies from Whipps and Salfi over densely layered sample filled instrumentals. The songs teeter from more pleasant pop songs to heavier fuzz tracks sometimes blending elements from both styles.
On their most recent self-titled EP, a collection of four songs that combines an ethereal shoegaze shine with some of their post-punk roots, Bleary Eyed the EP possesses a certain shimmer. “I could write shit that’s really esoteric” says Salfi. “But I want to write stuff that’s fun and warm for people to enjoy too.”
That aforementioned warmth has always been Bleary Eyed’s golden string, the thing that has led them through the labyrinth of life and back to the sense of community and undeniable love that defines their origin story. You listen to the EP, and you feel it too, whether it’s the way that Whipps and Salfi’s voices effortlessly complement each other’s or the sense of light that permeates the release.
It’s been there all along, through all the different versions of the band but this time they really got it. However, it was only by waiting that Bleary Eyed could have a self-titled so radiant, and that’s worth all the time in the world.”
