The new album from Hala, Red Herring, offers up the kind of thing that we'd call power pop in some quarters, and lo-fi pop in others. That Detroit-based musician Ian Ruhala did nearly the whole thing himself adds weight to looking at this through the prism of descriptions that fit the lo-fi genre, but the sound here is big. None of this seems half-assed, frankly, and the whole enterprise is as good as pop is likely to get in 2020.
"Somehow" is a catchy mid-tempo rocker, while "Why Do You Want Anything To Do With Me" is synth-pop of the sort that sounds like some lost gem from the Eighties. At his best here, Ruhala manages to imbue some of this material, like the yearning "We Can Start Again", and the shuffling "Camera", with a whole lot of charm. Shades of Nilsson and solo Lennon pop up throughout this, and astute listeners might find this reminding them of releases from Bleu and others from the Nineties who also looked to those guys for inspiration. "Lies" and the title cut on Red Herring are distinctive enough to earn this some real praise from me. And when one considers that Ian Ruhala is playing nearly everything you hear, one is likely to give these even higher marks. Red Herring skirts around the edges of bedsit pop and modern indie, but the inherent tunefulness of the compositions is what made me like it so much.
Red Herring is out on Friday.
More details on Hala via the official Facebook page.
[Photo: Zach Hagy]