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Black Hollies not a 'dark' version 1960s pop group

Posted: Friday, November 13, 2009

Justin Angelo Morey acknowledges that his band's name, The Black Hollies, might be a bit misleading at first.

However, he says he has no idea where the dreary Graham Nash comparisons are coming from once people actually hear the music, especially since the name is a reference to the Nash opposite of disco subculture.

"I don't hear The Hollies. I don't even particularly like them," he says. "But a lot of people actually will say, 'Oh, Black Hollies, that's the evil, darker version of The Hollies when, actually, black hollies was slang for speed up here in these parts in the '60s and '70s. We read about these people going to clubs and being on purple hearts or black hollies, and we thought that black hollies sounded kind of cool."

"These parts" would be the band's stomping grounds of New Jersey, where they formed roughly four years ago from the remnants of hard rockers Rye Coalition. Morey's former band found a lot of success through work with big names like Dave Grohl and Queens of the Stone Age.

But while many would be impressed by this, it's a contentious topic for him.

"Some write-ups I see say, 'The Black Hollies, featuring members of Rye Coalition,' and I don't like that. If people like Rye Coalition and they go to our show, they're going to throw apples at us, because we don't sound anything like that," he says. "It's like going to see a band that features ex-members of Spacemen 3 and they sound like Metallica. How bummed out would you be?"

The Black Hollies certainly are not a hard rocking band, per se. They might not perform the sometimes jangly '60s pop of The Hollies, but they do bear a resemblance to the psychedelic buzz of the same decade, most notably The Zombies and occasionally The Who.

Their latest release, "Softly Towards the Light," is a race-to-the-finish time capsule of fuzzy guitars, organs and pop harmonies that easily could serve as a primer for the unsure '60s psych pop novice.

But the band's live show is another story, one that reveals the foursome to be top-notch musicians and showmen. With Morey on bass and lead vocals, each member slashes his way through the notion of pretty pop to jointly create a potent rock 'n' roll juggernaut. At these moments, the description "hard rocking" is an apt one.

"I never felt like our recorded music ever captured what we usually create when we perform live. I feel like it's a completely different world," he says. "But in some ways, I feel like it's good to have two different representations of the group, like you can have your studio album and the live experience, which is a whole other bag of tricks."

And the band does perform some tricky stunts live. Drummer Nicholas Ferrante engages in multiple extended drum solos without missing a single beat, rendering nearly all goofy drummer jokes obsolete.

But if one truly wants to witness the trickery live, be cautioned: No matter how you choose to describe The Black Hollies, recorded or live, there is one descriptor that might get you tossed out before the tricks even begin.

"The term 'throwback,' what does that mean? How about I throw you back? What are they talking about? It's like a new term. You're kind of throwing back to something," Morey says. "And I thought we were just a modern band writing stuff and not really caring what comes out of the meat grinder when you stick all the bits and pieces in.

"Music in general, everything, it comes from some other place. Everyone's inspired by something, so (the term 'throwback') is a little disheartening," he adds. "We're just a regular band playing whatever comes out. You have to rely on each other to pull out whatever we can to make it interesting."


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