Houndmouth

Houndmouth is an American alternative blues band from New Albany, Indiana led by Matt Myers (guitar, vocals). Houndmouth formed in the summer of 2011. After playing locally in Louisville and Indiana, they performed at the SXSW music festival in March 2012 to promote their homemade self-titled EP. Geoff Travis, the head of Rough Trade was in the audience and offered a contract shortly after. In 2012, the band was named “Band Of The Week” by The Guardian. In 2013 Houndmouth’s debut album, From the Hills Below the City, was released by Rough Trade. This led to performances on Letterman, Conan, World Cafe, and several major festivals (ACL, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, and Newport Folk Festival). SPIN and Esquire.com named Houndmouth a “must-see” band at Lollapalooza, and Garden & Gun said, “You’d be hard pressed to find a more effortless, well-crafted mix of roots and rock this year than the debut album from this Louisville quartet.”

On their latest album Good For You, Houndmouth share a collection of songs set in places as far-flung as the Alamo and the Hudson River, each populated by a motley cast of characters: fairy-tale princesses and vampires, parking-lot lovers and wanna-be beauty queens. The result is a lovingly gathered catalogue of those wild and fleeting moments that stay lodged in our hearts forever, taking on a dreamlike resonance as years go by.

Produced by Brad Cook (Waxahatchee, Hiss Golden Messenger) and mixed by Jon Ashley (The War on Drugs, B.J. Barham), Good For You came to life at Houndmouth’s longtime headquarters, a 19th-century shotgun-style house decked out in gold wallpaper and crystal chandeliers. Over the course of a year spent holed up at the so-called Green House, Houndmouth slowly shaped the warm and unhurried sound of Good For You. “Except for the first EP we’d never recorded in our own space before,” says Myers. “It was perfect because we all felt so comfortable, and there were no time constraints on anything.”

In a departure from the shambolic spirit of past work like Little Neon Limelight (Houndmouth’s 2015 breakout, featuring the platinum-selling “Sedona”), Good For You bears a hi-fi minimalism that beautifully illuminates its finespun storytelling. “From working with Brad and Jon we learned to go for the simplest parts that best support the melody, and to let the frequencies take up more space in the songs,” says Myers. On the album-opening title track, Houndmouth bring that approach to a sweetly languid breakup song set against the surreal backdrop of the Kentucky Derby (“I wrote that before Covid, but at the time I was sort of emotionally going through a pandemic,” Myers points out). On “Miracle Mile,” Houndmouth pay homage to the many misfits they’ve met on the road, including a woman they’ve nicknamed after the Greek god of wine and ritual madness (“Sweet Dionysus/She never really liked us/Hangs on and stays too long/And then supplies us all with vices”). And on “Cool Jam,” Houndmouth eulogize a doomed romance, embedding their lyrics with so much broken wisdom (e.g., “Ain’t no heaven when you’re having a good time”).

On its closing track “Las Vegas,” Good For You shifts into a far rowdier mood, offering up a freewheeling anthem that once again reveals Houndmouth’s ability to build a novel’s worth of tension in just a few lines (“You wore makeup for three days straight/Half a Xanax for the holidays/By the look on your face/You’re rolling eights the hard way”). Working from a demo they’d laid down years before, the band produced “Las Vegas” on their own in the frenetic final session for the album. “We had a mic at one end of the hallway, and we were all just screaming the harmonies together from the other end,” Myers notes. In assembling the tracklist for Good For You, Houndmouth nearly withheld the song due to its outlier status, but ultimately found its joyfully unhinged energy well-suited to a world waking up from a year of grief and isolation.

For Houndmouth, the making of Good For You allowed for a major leap forward in their songwriting and sound while recalling the pure abandon of the band’s early days. “I remember the first time I ever came to the Green House and saw what was happening here and I thought, ‘I’m never leaving this place,’” says Myers. “This album felt like being back in that time again, only now everything’s a little more dialed-back and cared-for. It was like a return to the way we fell in love with playing music.”

A season of drastic change is what brought SUSTO frontman Justin Osborne to the band’s fifth full-length LP , My Entire Life [New West Records]. There was a divorce, difficulties re-building his band after the pandemic, and the pain and helplessness of witnessing family members struggle with addiction and mental illness. Despite these challenges, Justin ultimately found himself in a new landscape, with new love and a deeper perspective, all of which is masterfully
projected into My Entire Life.

While navigating some major life changes, Justin understandably experienced a surge of creative energy. He channeled this into writing and recording with the people closest to him, even as the tides of his personal life continued to shift. Primary collaborators included longtime producer Wolfgang “Wolfy” Zimmerman, SUSTO Co-founders, Johnny Delaware and Marshall Hudson, and his fiancé/co-writer Caroline Foyle. Much of the album was recorded at The Space, in Charleston, SC, but major sessions also took place at Echo Mountain Recording in Asheville, NC, and Chase Park Transduction in Athens,GA.

Johnny had moved to Mexico shortly after work on the album began, so some tracking was done at his home studio in Mexico City. The band also took a “recording pilgrimage” to the Mexican town of Tepotzlán (mythical birthplace of mesoamerican deity Quetzalcoatl), where they turned an airbnb into a remote recording studio, with help from members of Mexican Institute of Sound. The combined result of these efforts is a compelling blend of rock, folk and psychedelia, with vivid country-esque storytelling. It’s as raw and real as anything the band has done so far and everything you’d hope for from a modern rock ‘n’ roll record.

The album’s namesake and lead single, “My Entire Life” is melodically tearful, with an urgency “to keep living.” As a whole, the album documents Justin’s personal journey through highs and lows in his life, with many of the details on full display. He narrates the demise and aftermath of an almost decade long relationship, while celebrating the joy of falling in love and the hopefulness of starting over. There is a playfulness at times, but always a clear desire to distill wisdom from experience.

“SUSTO’s narrative has always been confessional, and songwriting is my way of trying to make sense of the chaos—good and bad—around me,” observes Justin. “These songs cover the spectrum of everything that’s happened in my life the last few years. There’s been a lot of change, which can be painful, but there’s also been a lot of joy and hope, along with everything in between. I figure that’s what life is.” He continues “…it’s a mosaic of all the good, bad, and mundane things we face as we make our way from birth to death. Along the way we ride the waves, but if you stay true to yourself and push through, I believe you can get to where you really want to be, and you can shape that mosaic into something that fulfills you. There is a lot of hope in that for me. This record is my story of navigating a bunch of chaos, but finding ways to carry on and manifest my own happiness…the last few years were a challenge, but I look back and see that I made it through, a better, truer, and more realized version of myself.”

It’s been quite the ride for SUSTO. In addition to achieving widespread critical acclaim in recent years, the group has built a diehard fan base through captivating live performances and compelling songs. For as much as My Entire Life is the ultimate vision of what the band can be, it’s also a classic story of one person rising from the ashes, wiser and fiery than ever… “Writing and performing has long been central in my life, and this season of change has only heightened my desire to connect with other people through songs. I’ve crossed a mountain, so I’m ready to charge forward, and share that story. Everybody goes through difficulty one way or another, we all get worn down, we all chase dreams; songs are there to remind us we aren’t alone in that. In my case. I’m thankful for lessons learned, and excited for the future. The privilege of sharing these songs with our audience is something I’m incredibly grateful for.”