Sydney’s Hollow States consists of Huck Hastings and brothers Joel and Hayden Woolf. Of course, we’ve met Huck Hastings before here at Backseat Mafia as a solo artist: his beautiful album ‘Cheers to Progress’ received an 8.5/10 from me and was described as being a cinematic sweep full of longing, love and loss. It is therefore a great honour to premiere the new video for the track ‘I’ll Leave’ from Hasting’s other job with the band ‘Hollow States’.
‘I’ll Leave’ is a broad and colourful brush stroke – a gurgling bubbling rich instrumentation and vocals filled with melancholy and yearning. There is a dream pop ambience throughout. Hastings’s indelible touch is evident in the empowerment, quiet defiance and longing in the lyrics and vocals. This is augmented by a complexity and vibrancy in the music: an acoustic thrum over a driving, insistent rhythm section and synth wash that reminds me of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark in the spacing and pace.
Producer Andy Bull says of the track:
In the studio it always felt like we were making something special. It‘s very heartfelt without being overplayed; it’s very charming, and Harrie’s voice has the makings of something quite iconic. The whole thing is quite beautiful, really. Can’t wait for people to hear it.
The video, directed by Genevieve Kaise, is a clever backwards running film with actors chasing through the streets of Sydney: combative and confronting and perfectly structured against the driving pace of the song. There is an immediate tension between Hastings’s soft vocals, the steady electronic music and the toxic masculinity in the video. It’s a compelling epic that, like Nolan’s ‘Memento’, requires a careful piecing together of events to understand a story that could involve a hate crime.
‘I’ll Leave’ is available to stream now through the link below:
Feature Photograph: Wilk
