Heligoats bring to mind the time a friend called in to a college radio station in Boston pretending to be the long lost Jeff Mangum with a brand new song to debut. After losing their minds, the station agreed to play the song this friend recorded with his Powerbook in a dorm room, while someone was playing video games in the background (because college). The song was so awful, the lyrics had something to do with little babies eyes, and the production values were dwarfed by static and gun noises in the background. It took them ten minutes to realize it was fake... that is less time than fake Daft Punk got last week. I guess the moral of this story is that it is easy to imitate Neutral Milk Hotel, but it is very difficult to be taken seriously. Feel free to take these guys seriously, because they rock.
Chris Otepka, Mike Mergenthaler, David James and Steven Mitchell have crafted an alt-folk sound very much akin to NMH (and The Mountain Goats), but the comparisons can end there. The songs on
Goodness Gracious took two years of Otepka touring to flesh out and develop, a very significant amount of time for a song to incubate. Also of note: Heligoats has existed in some form since 1999, making their reference to the sounds of that time more comprehensive. Always the moniker of Chris Otepka (Hubble Bubble) going solo, the other guys joined for this particular outing, and its going great so far.
Goodness Gracious is out today. -
joe
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MP3:"Heat Vents" - Goodness Gracious
MP3:"Fishsticks" - Goodness Gracious
Heligoats on Myspace