Henry Clay People Turn Up 25 Again

The Henry Clay People haven't hit the decade mark and they already want to turn back the dial. Their newest album, Twenty-Five For The Rest Of Our Lives, breaks from some of the progression heard in This Is A Desert EP and strips a few layers of wear and tear on themselves and maybe rock 'n roll too.

“We wanted to finally make the record that our 16-year-old selves would have been excited about,” says frontman Joey Siara. “Unfortunately, the only way to do so was to live for the last 13 years and get some adult suffering under our belt. Now we can direct our misguided teenage angst at our failed 20s.”

They ought to have done it sooner. Twenty-Five For The Rest Of Our Lives is a rollicking collection of impeccably composed arrangements with the most reflective lyrics of Siara's career. Their 16-year-old selves ought to be proud of their somewhat wiser and slightly pissier 20-something versions, at least as seen by their almost 30-something selves.

There is an honesty in the music that hasn't been heard for awhile, with punk influences as pure as they were in the 80s. It's honest too because the band didn't play test it. It was a album already germinating in Siara's head about the same time the band released Somewhere On The Golden Coast.

Twenty-Five For The Rest Of Our Lives revs up with rock's punk mistress.

After a short, spooky, regret-soaked aged analog introduction, the album breaks into the title track, 25 For The Rest Of Our Lives. The scrappy garage rock track laments the loss of youth without doing enough of anything to prevent it despite all those boasts that they might be different. It celebrates the presumptuousness of it, right before waking up to find you're exactly where you didn't want to be.

The Fakers follows up with the same reflective angst, only angrier. In some ways it captures how Siara felt about the Golden Coast, the album he says made him bored and lazy. The punkness of the song pushes the limits of what can be set down under two minutes as caught by jaminthevan, one of our favorite music sites.



The clip is grittier than the album cut, but no less poignant. And from there, the album only gets better. Hide rails against the idea of giving up dreams to do the sensible thing, only to discover there are no guarantees on that career track either. Somber and sobering, kids do what they're told only to move back home.

EveryBandWeEverLoved doesn't pull punches either. Even those who have a brush with success are destined to sell out or break up. The Backseat Of A Cab has poppy undertones until you hear the words about ephedrine medicated blissfulness in with lines about loneliness that come after all those carefree moments with those people you forget. Living Rooms, too, feels lonely in a different way; lives lived with the people we keep but just as lonely.

Friends Are Forgiving and Anymore, Any Less are both touching in their resignation over what people lose along the way. As you grow older, friends who were friends for life become friends you forget because they can't keep up so they give up. The other speaks candidly about how we look back and put more importance on past relationships that never existed.

None of them necessarily sounds sad with the Henry Clay People's amped up guitars and hammered bass lines. But as the album restarts after the first few passes, expect some recognition that this is a transformative album about how angry we are about losing our youth until we realize there's no point to being angry.

Twenty-Five For The Rest Of Our Lives Stings 9.1 On The liquid Hip Richter Scale.

As a snapshot, Twenty-Five For The Rest Of Our Lives by the Henry Clay People might have been good enough. But instead, Siara, his brother, and the balance of the band record it all as a memoir trapped in a time capsule and covering various bits and pieces of attitude from every album and the bands they loved at the same time. This is great rock 'n roll, tinged and tangled up with punk.

Twenty-Five For The Rest Of Our Lives by the Henry Clay People is available on iTunes. You can also pick up the album from Amazon or order it on vinyl from Barnes & Noble. It's worth the download in entirety (which includes the bonus track Calling Free), a real gem put out by TDB Records and the most promising set for live shows yet. The album is the kind you'll eventually sing along to. If not now, a few years from now.

Waters Crashes In With For The One

"Port O'Brien is no more," opens the "about section" of the band's Facebook page. Sad news for fans following the acoustically-inclined indie folk band founded by Van Pierszalowski and Cambria Goodwin. But good news too.

Pierszalowski's new indie project, Waters, is rock solid. The first single released from the upcoming album Out In The Light is making some waves. For The One is a sharply arranged indie rocker with raw and impassioned lyrics. It's not all that unlike his life at the moment.

"The record is about waking up. It is about getting out of a situation that seems endless, and realizing you're not too old to make dramatic and sudden changes in your life," said Pierszalowski. "It is about starting over." 

Pierszalowski did start over. After the shutdown of Port O'Brien, he headed to Olso and put together a new band of of Norwegian musicians. They practiced together every day for two months before heading to Dallas to record with alternative rock underground legend John Congleton (The Paper Chase) to create a stark and intimate sound with a large and enveloping rhythm section.



Pierszalowski and Congleton had worked together before on Port O'Brien tracks, not to mention three or four dozen other bands, ranging from Modest Mouse and The Mountain Goats to Okkervil River and Bono. Congleton's influence on any album always aims to break from mediocrity, which perfectly underscores the theme of Pierzalowski's songs.

Pierszalowski moves from downsized to stripped down bigness. 

Although For The One underscores the move toward a bigger sound for Pierzalowski, several of the upcoming tracks retain his attachment to folk rock. Mickey Mantle, for example, is a brilliantly composed, acoustically-driven lament with honest and near-confessional lyrics. Abridge My Love begins in much the same way before it crashes into something fuzzier, bigger, and bolder.

More than that, Out In The Light stretches Pierzalowski's addictive tenor, opening doors that the musician had never been able to budge before within the context of the loose and punchy structures of Port O'Brien. There's no question he has been living his theme, making changes that simultaneously fill him with regret and hope. Sometimes you have to blow up what you have to move forward.

Perhaps the track that captures that feeling best is O Holy Break Of Day, which ebbs and flows back and forth before surrender and freedom. The feelings are etched in the instrumentals too, quietly setting the tone before breaking into bristling loudness with scratchy guitars and crashing drums.


There is one more thing that stands out with this new direction for Pierzalowski. For as long as I can remember, he has always had the utmost concern for the audience, always striving to engage them. The new album accomplishes this on every level. You could see it at the Troubadour in August, with the audience straining to hear the music before they became awash in it.

For The One By Waters Crashes In At 9.6 On The Liquid Hip Richter Scale.

Although Waters carries forward his affinity for the sea (even Port O'Brien was named after a bay in Alaska featuring a now-abandoned cannery on Kodiak Island), Pierzalowski seems to be playing in the thin line where the water touches the sky. Sometimes it's as if he is drowning. Other times it's like he is being pulled ashore, winded but safe. All of it, together, amounts to his best album ever.

Although the full album will be out later this month, you can find the single For The One on iTunes. As a bonus, Pierzalowski recently dropped O Holy Break Of Day on Sound Cloud. We'll add links to the full LP as soon it is out. It's being released by Pierzalowski's longtime label, TBD Records.

Henry Clay People Land In A Desert

The Henry Clay People have played hundreds of free-spirited shows since they first formed in 2005. Once, in 2008, they received a dubious distinction as the most intoxicated band at SXSW. And it hasn't been the only live show made infamous.

Sometimes it's kind of shocking. The band was originally founded by two brothers who grew tired of typical college antics only to make some of their own on stage. But even more uncharacteristic of the chaos, one of them is a pessimist and perfectionist.

So when indie reviewers didn't get behind their last album or the label asked them to make some compromises or frontman Joey Siara thinks about his progressing hearing damage, all of it sounds sort of on the brink of catastrophic. You can even make yourself dizzy thinking about where they might end up.

Here's the run down. The Henry Clay People have paid their dues. Their low point was sharing their last loaf of bread in a park for dinner. Their high point was signing with a new label and opening for the Drive-By Truckers. And despite the steady climb, some people still peg them as competent but not distinguished. Is it any wonder their new EP has its own sense of aridness?

The Henry Clay People Find This Is A Desert.

Without doubt, the new EP is more mature than previous releases. And like many EPs that spiral out of the studio immediately after a tour, This Is A Desert likely marks a transition. Or, you never know, it might simply be another way for the band to cover those incidentals.

It's hard to say. Part of listening to the EP picks up on the uncertainty that comes with being signed just as much as being newly discovered. Meanwhile, TDB Records describes the rushed outing a collection of the familiar and exploration of the new. It's some of their best work, except It Isn't The Waiting. Pass on that one.

The Winter Song is better than that, even if it really doesn't showcase the three songs that really make the EP worthwhile. It's best described as some sort of epic rock lament or bizarre slacker ballad more indicative of an aging band than an up and comer. And since the band was caught short without a video for the work, they placed the single over a studio fight between the two brothers.


The best parts of the EP include California Wildfire, which is the best track as indie rock (light). It's also the only full 4-plus minute song worth the download if you grab only one. It opens with buzzing guitars before breaking into steady vocals underscored by piano with just enough noise to keep it from being cleanly mainstream.

The next two picks are bittersweet in that they are solid songs but you might feel cheated because both end in under two minutes. The pop punkish The Honey Love He Sells may get plenty of play to make up for its shortness. And while This Is A Desert misses with the opening band chant, it recovers with the vocals and groovy guitar noise.

This Is A Desert By The Henry Clay People Rips 4.6 On The Liquid Hip Richter Scale.

It's a playable EP that serves as an introduction (or reintroduction) of the band's potential beyond the pub rock they sometimes produced with Autumn Tone Records. Expect better things ahead from Joey (vocals, guitar), Andy (guitar, vocals), Jonathan Price (bass, vocals), and Eric Scott (drums).

You can find This Is A Desert by The Henry Clay People on iTunes. This Is A Desert EP is also at Amazon. Go ahead and browse Somewhere On The Golden Coast too. Nobody Taught Us To Quit is the one to zero in on. It might only be a minute, but it's a great minute.