Some bands disappear so quietly that you stop expecting them back, then return with a record that makes the wait look like a deliberate act of patience. Sydney’s Hoolahan have done exactly that with ‘Bay of Chance’, their third album and the first since 2017’s ‘Casuarina’. It arrives on Scenic Drive Records, the iconic Sydney label run by legendary producer and musician Wayne Connolly. It’s a fitting home. Connolly has mixed the band for years, and he’s the sort of ear who knows when a song needs polish and when it needs to be left alone.
The songwriting engine is still the childhood friendship of David Orszaczky and Tim Kevin, two Canberra kids who learned guitar by hitting pause and play on a tape deck. You can hear that closeness in the way their guitars trade lines and never crowd each other.
Together with bassist Harry Roden and drummer Neil Bateman, they sound like a band that has done its thinking in the years between records and has nothing to prove.
The album opens with ‘Bay of Chance Waiting’, a song Kevin carried around as a demo for years. It’s steeped in the psychedelic jangle of Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds, with a lyric about the crossroads we all reach and how nostalgia can be both a comfort and a trap. There is a hypnotic roll throughout the song: it’s mesmerising. Kevin plays with The Apartments and you can see a genetic link with the soft reflective elegance.
That mix of longing and forward motion runs through the whole record. ‘Zircon Ring’ follows, the single I wrote about in July, still sparkling, with Marresque jangle to the guitars lifting it into the light. Indeed the instrumentation jingles and jangles with a shimmer like a mirage in the desert, and the vocal are filled with a deep yearning carrying an immersive melody. This is truly gorgeous music.
Two earlier singles deliver. ‘Holiday Row’ coasts like the soundtrack to a road trip movie, with delicate harmonies and a brilliant Beach Boys ring to it. ‘Altered Days’ is the band in its natural habitat, layered with twelve-string guitar, strings and Bass VI lurking on the fringes.
The record’s charm is in its detail and its sense of humour. ‘Harrison Ford’ turns a missed celebrity sighting in a Los Angeles hotel lobby into a song about family.
In ‘Take Your Time’ the horns arrive as late additions, an Angelo Badalamenti-style outro closes the track and nothing is crammed in. It all sounds unhurried and considered, which suits songs about family, travel and time slipping by.
‘Saturday Driving’ is Orszaczky’s memory of watching City to Surf runners from a cold Sydney flat, and he calls it as close as he’ll ever come to jazz guitar. ‘Madison’ brings back some bounce with baritone guitar and delicate piano splashes. The closer, ‘Ballad of the Angry Pedestrian’, grew out of a black-and-white photograph of Tim’s mother as a three-year-old in a 1950s Sydney backyard, and it ends the album on a note that feels personal and warm.
Kevin’s production work with The Apartments and Holly Throsby shows in how the album is put together.
‘Bay of Chance’ is breathtakingly beautiful music to salve the soul, from musicians who can conjure up magic in every note. It’s a perfect example of what I call the Marrickville Sound: experienced musicians, years into their craft, making some of the best music of their lives. Creativity does not have a use-by date, and Hoolahan are proof of it.
‘Bay of Chance’ is out today via Scenic Drive Records and you can download and stream through the link above and here.
The beautiful art design is by Cameron Emerson-Elliott and Lee Orszaczky and features the work of Canadian artist and natural ink maker Jason Logan.
You can catch the band on their album tour: Mixtape Marrickville in Sydney on Saturday 10 October with Victoria and Team Building, Smiths Alternative in Canberra on Saturday 24 October with Nick Craft, Frank’s Wild Years in Thirroul on Sunday 25 October with Doldrums, and Link & Pin in Woy Woy on Saturday 7 November with The Exile Co. Ticket information is at hoolahanband.com.
