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HOOVERIII
Wisely armed with bliss to fight our age of calamity, LA psych-kraut explorers Hooveriii return with their pastoral and expansive 4th album “Pointe.”
“Pointe” is not the sound of Hooveriii maturing. It’s the sound of a band at the height of their power ascending.
There’s a moment leading up to each decision where, for a brief instant, there are infinite possibilities that have yet to be distilled into a singular outcome. It’s a phenomenon that has been explored over the years by novelists like Graham Greene and a concept that Hooveriii frontman Bert Hoover also feels inexplicably drawn towards. “I find that period in time to be fascinating, maybe I’m in it often, but a lot of these songs take place in that moment and that moment can last for years,” he explains. This idea lies at the conceptual core of Hooveriii’s fourth album Pointe, a collection of songs that features musicians from the band’s past and present and sees them collectively exploring musical geography that Hooveriii hasn’t explored in the past. “We just wanted to do something different,” Hoover says. “We were feeling a little burnt on guitar rock and really wanted to challenge ourselves.”
The result is an album that was inspired by everything from the ‘60s psychedelic act Pisces to Phil Lynott’s solo releases and pioneering electronic acts like Tangerine Dream, to craft a collection of songs that are more about creating a specific type of feeling than fitting into a specific genre. “I feel like on this album we were bringing a lot of influences to the forefront that we never had the maturity to accomplish before while also leaning into the humor a little bit and avoiding being full-on ‘serious songwriters,’” Hoover adds. Correspondingly, the music roster on Pointe features Hoover, Kaz Mirblouk, James Novick, Owen Barrett, Gabe Flores, Gabriel Salomon, Anna Wallace, Paco Casanova, Matt Zuk, Jon Modaff, Shaughnessy Starr, Olaf Selland and Ari B. Jones and was—and unlike previous Hooveriii releases—was recorded over an extended period of time and was both consciously and subconsciously inspired by the touring the band did in support of 2021’s Water For The Frogs and 2022’s A Round Of Applause. “I’m really grateful for all of the people who contributed to this album and it’s a long list of people but it’s important that they are all listed because we all really pulled together to make this album,” Hoover adds.
“Every record is kind of a response to the last record and I like listening to people’s discographies like that,” Hoover explains. “When we finished A Round Of Applause we were in rock mode playing with a lot of rock and psych bands and I was really thinking about what do you do with a fourth record?” The answer turns out to be something more esoteric and less predictable than a guitar-driven album while retaining the core of the band’s sound, which has made the Los Angeles-based act such an exciting act to watch evolve. From the spacey groove of the opener “Prom” to the expansive, synth-friendly ballad “This Rock” and the epic future-folk experimentation of the album’s closer “Dreaming” (which features vocals by Wallace), Pointe is an album that references the past while stretching toward an unknown future. “I think that our intuition going forward is to keep ourselves surprised and keep people who like us surprised, hopefully without isolating anyone,” he adds.
When it comes to the lyrics for Pointe, Hoover says that while some of these are more personal than his previous material, it’s important for him to leave the actual content up to each listener’s own interpretation. “I like songs where people can admit to being deadbeats even if it is more of a character or you’re reflecting on one aspect of your personality,” he explains. “It’s also a transitional record in a lot of ways because sonically we wanted to drift away for album number four.” Correspondingly, Hoover considers “This Rock” to be a love song. But it could just as easily be about existential dread or the way that another person can change one’s orientation to the universe. Or the countless small decisions that can lead up to an outcome and the way our own smallness can be a catalyst for putting something out into the world that can affect so many other people in unexpected and important ways. Or maybe it is about none of these things, it’s whatever it means to you.
More than anything else Pointe feels like a full circle moment for Hooveriii, which has evolved from a bedroom solo project into an expansive band that features an army of talented musicians and contributors. “In a lot of ways, Pointe feels like an epilogue to one phase of the band and a prologue to the next one,” Hoover says of how the band’s latest release fits into their musical catalog. Pointe is a collection of songs that weren’t recorded in a linear fashion but that fit together in a way that feels almost cosmic in nature. In other words, it’s Hooveriii at their most creative and undistilled. “I don't really care about trying to push the envelope forward,” However admits, looking back at the long road leading up to completing the album. “I care about making a good record that sounds cohesive—and I feel like with this one, we did a good job.”
“Pointe” is not the sound of Hooveriii maturing. It’s the sound of a band at the height of their power ascending.
There’s a moment leading up to each decision where, for a brief instant, there are infinite possibilities that have yet to be distilled into a singular outcome. It’s a phenomenon that has been explored over the years by novelists like Graham Greene and a concept that Hooveriii frontman Bert Hoover also feels inexplicably drawn towards. “I find that period in time to be fascinating, maybe I’m in it often, but a lot of these songs take place in that moment and that moment can last for years,” he explains. This idea lies at the conceptual core of Hooveriii’s fourth album Pointe, a collection of songs that features musicians from the band’s past and present and sees them collectively exploring musical geography that Hooveriii hasn’t explored in the past. “We just wanted to do something different,” Hoover says. “We were feeling a little burnt on guitar rock and really wanted to challenge ourselves.”
The result is an album that was inspired by everything from the ‘60s psychedelic act Pisces to Phil Lynott’s solo releases and pioneering electronic acts like Tangerine Dream, to craft a collection of songs that are more about creating a specific type of feeling than fitting into a specific genre. “I feel like on this album we were bringing a lot of influences to the forefront that we never had the maturity to accomplish before while also leaning into the humor a little bit and avoiding being full-on ‘serious songwriters,’” Hoover adds. Correspondingly, the music roster on Pointe features Hoover, Kaz Mirblouk, James Novick, Owen Barrett, Gabe Flores, Gabriel Salomon, Anna Wallace, Paco Casanova, Matt Zuk, Jon Modaff, Shaughnessy Starr, Olaf Selland and Ari B. Jones and was—and unlike previous Hooveriii releases—was recorded over an extended period of time and was both consciously and subconsciously inspired by the touring the band did in support of 2021’s Water For The Frogs and 2022’s A Round Of Applause. “I’m really grateful for all of the people who contributed to this album and it’s a long list of people but it’s important that they are all listed because we all really pulled together to make this album,” Hoover adds.
“Every record is kind of a response to the last record and I like listening to people’s discographies like that,” Hoover explains. “When we finished A Round Of Applause we were in rock mode playing with a lot of rock and psych bands and I was really thinking about what do you do with a fourth record?” The answer turns out to be something more esoteric and less predictable than a guitar-driven album while retaining the core of the band’s sound, which has made the Los Angeles-based act such an exciting act to watch evolve. From the spacey groove of the opener “Prom” to the expansive, synth-friendly ballad “This Rock” and the epic future-folk experimentation of the album’s closer “Dreaming” (which features vocals by Wallace), Pointe is an album that references the past while stretching toward an unknown future. “I think that our intuition going forward is to keep ourselves surprised and keep people who like us surprised, hopefully without isolating anyone,” he adds.
When it comes to the lyrics for Pointe, Hoover says that while some of these are more personal than his previous material, it’s important for him to leave the actual content up to each listener’s own interpretation. “I like songs where people can admit to being deadbeats even if it is more of a character or you’re reflecting on one aspect of your personality,” he explains. “It’s also a transitional record in a lot of ways because sonically we wanted to drift away for album number four.” Correspondingly, Hoover considers “This Rock” to be a love song. But it could just as easily be about existential dread or the way that another person can change one’s orientation to the universe. Or the countless small decisions that can lead up to an outcome and the way our own smallness can be a catalyst for putting something out into the world that can affect so many other people in unexpected and important ways. Or maybe it is about none of these things, it’s whatever it means to you.
More than anything else Pointe feels like a full circle moment for Hooveriii, which has evolved from a bedroom solo project into an expansive band that features an army of talented musicians and contributors. “In a lot of ways, Pointe feels like an epilogue to one phase of the band and a prologue to the next one,” Hoover says of how the band’s latest release fits into their musical catalog. Pointe is a collection of songs that weren’t recorded in a linear fashion but that fit together in a way that feels almost cosmic in nature. In other words, it’s Hooveriii at their most creative and undistilled. “I don't really care about trying to push the envelope forward,” However admits, looking back at the long road leading up to completing the album. “I care about making a good record that sounds cohesive—and I feel like with this one, we did a good job.”
TRACK LISTING
Side A
1. Prom
2. The Tall Grass
3. This Rock
4. Can't You Hear Me Calling?
5. I Am Alive
Side B
6. The Game
7. Circling The Square
8. The Ship That I Sail
9. Dreaming
Time after time, we all talk about … well, time — often in aphorisms and cliches. X is “a waste of time,” while Y is “time well spent.” We are all apt to lose track of time but, perhaps in equal measure, we have plenty of time on our hands. We think we have all the time in the world -- until we remember that time flies, after which our time runs out and we’re dead (for a long time).
Since 2020, internal clocks have had to be readjusted with the pace of life ebbing and flowing. For Los Angeles psych-rock sextet Hooveriii (pronounced "Hoover Three") that adjustment seeped its way into their songwriting and ultimately their forthcoming album, A Round of Applause.
The record cherrypicks from an array of genres — pop, girl-group ditties, synth-ish keyboards and funk —but the end result is a cohesive long-player with songs that revolve around the Spanish Inquisition (“Stone Man”); or follow “the legendary Peruvians who run long distances in the Andes Mountains (“The Runner”). “I let my imagination run wild,” Hoover said. Elsewhere on A Round of Applause, the Hooveriii frontman finally recorded a song, “The Pearl,” that he wrote in 2017. “It sounds like a Harry Nilsson jingle like to me, a fantasy song,” he continued. “It's more like a nursery rhyme than a song with an important message. You know, it's just like keeping things fun. … Nilsson didn’t take everything so fucking seriously. We want to avoid that self-seriousness. We're a bunch of goofy musicians.”
Since 2020, internal clocks have had to be readjusted with the pace of life ebbing and flowing. For Los Angeles psych-rock sextet Hooveriii (pronounced "Hoover Three") that adjustment seeped its way into their songwriting and ultimately their forthcoming album, A Round of Applause.
The record cherrypicks from an array of genres — pop, girl-group ditties, synth-ish keyboards and funk —but the end result is a cohesive long-player with songs that revolve around the Spanish Inquisition (“Stone Man”); or follow “the legendary Peruvians who run long distances in the Andes Mountains (“The Runner”). “I let my imagination run wild,” Hoover said. Elsewhere on A Round of Applause, the Hooveriii frontman finally recorded a song, “The Pearl,” that he wrote in 2017. “It sounds like a Harry Nilsson jingle like to me, a fantasy song,” he continued. “It's more like a nursery rhyme than a song with an important message. You know, it's just like keeping things fun. … Nilsson didn’t take everything so fucking seriously. We want to avoid that self-seriousness. We're a bunch of goofy musicians.”
TRACK LISTING
SIDE A
1. See
2. Out Of My Time
3. Twisted And Vile
4. Water Lilly
5. Time - The Outlaw
SIDE B
1. My Directive
2. Stone Men
3. Iguana
4. The Runner
5. Cruisin'
6. The Pearl
Having originally been born as a solo drum machine project by Bert Hoover, Hooveriii (pronounced "Hoover Three") has now evolved into it's true final form - a six member band adept at creating their own brand of psychedelic space rock. And after almost a decade in, the band is set to release their sophomore album and debut for The Reverberation Appreciation Society, Water For The Frogs. Influenced by Iggy’s The Idiot, Bowie’s Berlin records, and Soft Machine, the LP sees the band creating their own version of prog rock, circa 2021.
In 2019, Hooveriii took their live show to Europe for the first time. Bert Hoover shares, “seeing all the old cities and beautiful landscapes while becoming closer as a band had a huge impact on this album. A lot of our favorite music came from the Krautrock scene in Germany from the late 60's-70's, and when we had a day off in Furth, Germany, we spent most of it writing the record,” he continues, “we were able to rehearse in an old German bunker that has been converted to rehearsal space. It definitely had a strange energy that helped give this album light.”
In 2019, Hooveriii took their live show to Europe for the first time. Bert Hoover shares, “seeing all the old cities and beautiful landscapes while becoming closer as a band had a huge impact on this album. A lot of our favorite music came from the Krautrock scene in Germany from the late 60's-70's, and when we had a day off in Furth, Germany, we spent most of it writing the record,” he continues, “we were able to rehearse in an old German bunker that has been converted to rehearsal space. It definitely had a strange energy that helped give this album light.”
TRACK LISTING
SIDE A
1. Cindy
2. Control
3. Hang Em' High
4. Shooting Star
SIDE B
1. We're Both Lawyers
2. Erasure
3. Gone