By Constance van Rheenen
Portishead, Modest Mouse, Arcade Fire… Do any of these names appear in at least 50 percent of your playlists? Then you are in luck. The boys of Hear, Hear! (A Cheer) have come up with a hybrid ‘headphone music’ style that is ‘best enjoyed while lying in bed waiting for sleep to take you over’, influenced by these alternative rock, indie experimental bands. The underground band – yes we said it – has recently released their debut on vinyl and is frequently played on Belgian national radio. Thankfully for us, between having released their album ‘For people who believe change is something they’ve lost in a couch’ and developing some new material, the boys will be making their way to UCR’s StuKaFest in a few days time.
For those of you who have not left their room since the start of the semester, StuKaFest is a student organized three-round event in which performers of all sorts – actors, DJ’s, rappers and poets – come to our Koestraat, Bagijnhof and Willibrord rooms to create a memorable night. Which is precisely what the Hear, Hear! boys plan to do: ‘We’re gonna do our best to make it a memorable evening.’ So in preparing for the big night, we decided to ask a couple of questions to see who Hear, Hear! (A Cheer) actually are, and we found out the following quirky details.
Front man Tomas Verheyen founded the lo-fi indie band in 2009 in Ghent. They have since released their debut album on vinyl (“Yay!”) and have been doing several gigs in Belgium. Their name, which ‘just sounded good, really’, is one of the lesser eccentric titles they have produced (see their album title), since the boys like titles ‘that have multiple interpretations.’ The self-proclaimed “quiet rebels” would describe their music as “layered … [it] tries to take you on a three-minute journey, keeping you suspended between being awake and asleep”. Appropriately, nearly everything on the album was ‘written, recorded and performed’ by the front man in his bedroom. When the front man is not lying in bed ‘waiting for sleep to take … over’ or enjoying a beer, ‘give me a cold beer any day!’, he listens to music that is ‘more active’. Naturally, the band’s spirit animal is the lazily set cat, because ‘who doesn’t love cats’ and ‘it all starts with a cat…’ But no worries, the boys are active in other aspects, they do, after all, liken themselves with AC/DC, ‘definitely a swinger’, rather than One Direction.
So, if you are ready for a few ‘three-minute journeys’ this Tuesday, the boys will be returning to their roots by performing in one of our own bedrooms. Who knows, maybe they willll feel inspired and you willl be witness to the creation of a heartbreak album ‘For those who are otherwise engaged’.
Constance van Rheenen, class of 2016, is a Musicology major from Doesburg, The Netherlands
