Words by Jason Lee
After a few spins of Hotel Iris’s Tourist (we’re assuming you already nabbed the vinyl version of the Brooklyn band’s debut LP after it’s release a week ago!) you will likely start to notice the sheer number of quotable quotables contained therein starting pretty much right from the jump when the opening lines of its opening track (“Fall In”) enter after a deceptively mellow intro that fades in for a full minute (more a grower than a shower!) riding a faded mid-tempo groove of intertwined bass ’n’ guitar like a spider blithely yet methodically weaving its web in prep for the carnage to come…
…with singer-songwriter-arachnid-in-human-form Jack Butler declaring that “pride is taking a fall” which is subtly but significantly different than “pride goeth-ing before a fall” cuz in contrast to being a bad portent, in TODAY’S AGE OF NO SHAME the once deadly sin of pride has in large part fallen by the wayside and itself suffers a sense of wounded pride in Hotel Iris’ telling, resigned to “wandering helpless in the after hours / waiting for you to call” tho’ when you don’t there’s the implicit threat that “it’s gonna get you back / the first chance it’s offered” with a likely assist from its six closest compatriots: envy, wrath, lust, greed, gluttony and sloth…
…all poised to appear soon enough on the LP’s remaining tracks as foreshadowed by the restless, coiled tension of “Fall In” where between tambourine-assisted middle eights our narrator contemplates “the frenzy of an endless summer…every night beside a grim and obsessive lover” before repeatedly insisting “I don’t wanna fall in” and you can probably guess the rest esp. as our narrator admits to “one drink turn[ing] into seven” and being in an already “frail and tattered” state where it’s perhaps a simple matter of fate that “the fear takes over” which hey at least falling into an agitated state this early on all but guarantees plenty of emotionally-laden grist for the nine tracks to follow…
Images by Shannon Virtue, @brooklynelitist @themarkbenjamin and @ash.comer among others
…which reminds us of a quote from Elvis Costello and no not the one about “dancing about architecture” which we’re sick of but the one where he claims that all his songs up to that point could be reduced down to two motivating factors—guilt and revenge—and while the emotional spectrum of Tourist is much wider (certainly more than two-dimensional) it does share with Elvis’s early work an affinity for witty, literary, byzantine expressions of human folly plus a tendency to counter-balance its more embittered, paranoid, and insular lyrics with music overflowing with warm, expansive textures, propulsive rhythms and galvanizing melodic hooks…
…like on subsequent track “Antares” which takes the subdued tension of “Fall In” and lights an M-80 under its a$$ with a manic Andy Rourke style bounding baseline propelled by rat-a-tat-tat sixteenth-notes on hi-hat cymbal like crustaceans scuttling across the ocean floor as twin guitars race to reach escape velocity before crashing back down to earth with a bedrock riff that enters after a couple minutes of space exploration all which apropos to a song named after a star 700 times bigger than the diameter of our sun with a gravitational pull to match and lyrics about “an unhinged jaw you’re left to appease […] full of strychnine, full of Russian memes” which again HITS LIKE A TIMELY, POETIC EVOCATION OF OUR TIMES…
…but it’s not until the third track where these two musical tendencies are wedded together with “The Kacer” ranging widely across a series of dynamic peaks and valleys and other different kinds of tension so no wonder we at first misheard the song’s opening lines as “I wanna be your dog / no I don’t / I want to be eggnog” (actual lyrics: “I want to be adored / no I don’t / I want to be ignored”) seeing as after all the song does rush ahead erratically from one train of thought to the next all while appearing to remain in firm command somehow much like a dog drunk on eggnog stopping to stick its snout into every crack and crevice in its path while never pausing for too long or losing its way…
…which is the overall vibe of the song’s music video as well as directed by official “friend of HI” and former/likely future Deli profilee Dylan Mars Greenberg whose recent feature film Spirit Riser is well worth your cinematic attention and whose color-gel assisted performance clip for “The Kacer” sees the four members of Hotel Iris (Jack alongside Sam Gord, Matt Ellin, and Zachary Lawrence) rocking the f— out in their practice space strewn with hanging houseplants and bisexual lighting…
…that is when they aren’t cavorting excitedly down the streets and back alleyways of Ridgewood, Queens or posing unctuously in the backyard of local live music mainstay trans-pecos like a bargain-basement DIY A Hard Day’s Night with cameos by a wide-lapeled, powder-blue-suited Elvis (Presley, this time) and a Paul Stanley action figure modified from overstocked “Captain” figurines of Captain & Tennille fame but we digress..
…and ok we ain’t gonna go thru every song here but like we said before they’ve all got a great pull quote or two just waiting to be extracted with next two numbers in particular containing some good pick-up lines you may wanna remember and use in the near future with “Twin Bed Blues” beckoning a potential seductee with the promise, “if you can’t find the space in your own head / there’s always a space in my twin bed” on a track that sounds as if it was written for David Johansen to perform, if only (RIP)…
…whereas “Smoke Alarm” takes a more direct approach in urging its not-necessarily-so-significant other to “come and kiss me / before we both dissolve” cuz there’s nothing quite so sexy as terror sex with the twist being that it’s sung from the perspective of a moth and did you know moths are known for their tendency to mistake any source of incandescent light for the light of the moon which some say they use for determining their flight paths which is precisely why they flutter around front-porch light bulbs so manically in a vain effort to maintain a constant angle in relation to the source of light except that it’s right next to them instead of hundreds of thousands of miles away which must be incredibly confusing and frustrating for the poor winged creatures which again feels like an APT METAPHOR FOR OUR CONTEMPORARY TIMES…
I think ambition’s got me down
Crushed by still air and dreams where you’re involved
Bare bulb glows for all around
Shining example, around which we revolve
…which ok now we’re really done except to note we’re intrigued by “The Hollowed Out Hole of the World Wide Window” which appears to have something to do with a steel mill foreman being urged to “sit on my face” to a tune that’s halfway between B-52s and Devo and oh yeah then there’s the title track too about “living like a tourist / lost in constant transit / caught in the turnstile” which is a good point of comparison for the album’s kaleidoscopic array of musical settings and emotional states nonetheless united by a sense of unceasing movement and transition that itself is preceded by the track “Turnstile” which concludes with Jack fervently maintaining that “SOMETIMES IT FEELS LIKE AN ICE AGE! LIKE AN ICE AGE!” in a tone of voice at once rapturous and panicked and really we get it, Jack, we really do…
FFO: The Replacements (later material), Go-Betweens, The Adverts, Elvis Costello, Graham Parker & the Rumour, B-52s, Devo, KISS, TS Eliot, New York Dolls, Alan Vega, Buzzcocks, Babe Ruth, Bernie Sanders on the Today Show in 1981, the Move, Flying Lizards, Sakanaction, Artless
******
FROM HOTEL IRIS:
Hotel Iris was started by singer-songwriter Jack Butler as a pandemic-induced writing exercise. In 2022, the full lineup was recruited through Craigslist and coffee shop ads, and the group began work on what would become their first album.
Taking cues from slacker rock, brit pop and the sleep-deprived sleaze of 2000’s NYC, H.I. carved out a niche in the Brooklyn music community, pinning jagged guitars and breakneck changes against sing-a-long hooks and confessional lyrics evoking last-call panic attacks, gig economy grindset, and bisexual lighting. The twin lead attack of Butler and bassist/co-writer Matt Ellin mixes deadpan snark with goofy glam, imbuing every performance with a chaotic, infectious energy.
Tourist is now available on streaming platforms. The culmination of years of work, of our journey and experiences as a band and as residents of New York City and Ridgewick at large, and the hard work and dedication of our friends and collaborators. We’re so incredibly proud to finally share our work.
Thank you to @dogjail at @daisychainbk for engineering and mixing, to @danielneimansound for mastering. For giving our work the push that it needed to elevate beyond our own visions.
To @slvirtue for the cover art (and @becuz.coda for showing me how to enlarge photos, amongst too many small gestures of help to count) to @dylanmarsgreenberg and @themarkbenjamin for their videography and to @aidan_thats_me for his artwork and designs, for helping put a face to our music, and for keeping our name on as many grimy bathroom walls as we can manage.
Special thanks to Nancy, Kaycee, Sophie, Todd, Will, Iyare, Alyssa, Non, Dave, Yoko, Duncan, Zeev, Jonah, Dan, Kevin, Max, Clare, Steve, Travis & John, to all the bands that joined us in celebrate our release, to @barfreda801 for hosting, to all our families, to all the bartenders and baristas that we’ve aired our grievances to at some point in the past three years. Your love and guidance helped this all come together, and we are so, so grateful.
Anyway, yeh! Give it a listen!
-H.I.