Hello Seahorse! shakes up music world
It could be said that Mexico City-based Hello Seahorse! is what happens when first-world indie rock meets electronic-tinged experimental rock en español, but the band’s singer, Los Angeles-born Denise Gutierrez, would not agree.
Quirky quartet · Not only does their music show their personalities, but each member of Hello Seahorse! has a nickname. The band also strives to break the language barrier by creating songs that reel the listener in and vocals that express emotion even for those who don’t speak Spanish. - Photo courtesy of Nacional Records
“We are part of a new generation of bands in Mexico that are playing stuff that isn’t pop or traditional norteño,” said Gutierrez, who is also known as “Lo Blondo.” “But all these genres being thrown around — I just don’t feel part of it.”
Isolated from much of the mainstream music culture that inundates the lives of many Westernized teenagers, Gutierrez and her bandmates, including Fernando Burgos, a.k.a. Oro de Neta, Gabriel de Leon, a.k.a. Bonnz! and José Borunda, a.k.a. Joe, instead drew from their upbringings in Mexico to create music that is both personal and effortlessly universal.
“We as a band grew up listening to Mexican romance ballad singers like José José and people that aren’t from our generation,” Gutierrez said. “It’s a geographical thing, though. Wherever you are standing and whatever is happening around you — it can be new or old — is going to be an influence for you.”
Hello Seahorse! formed the group as teenagers, brought together by a Myspace ad in 2005. The band’s first album was … And the Jellyfish Parade, an album of cutesy, mostly English-language songs about heartache and mixtapes.
Hoy a Las Ocho, originally released in 2007 as a seven-song EP through the band’s Myspace page, brought more bubbly hooks and whimsical lyrics, but hinted at the changes to come.
Hoy a Las Ocho also ends with “Universo 2,” a song whose fuzzy guitars and electronic overload is such a departure from their previous efforts that it might as well have been produced by another band.
Bestia, the band’s 2009 breakout album, expanded on the experimental sounds of “Universo 2” (a remixed version of which ended up on Bestia’s final track list) by abandoning the sparkly Architecture in Helsinki vibes of its early days and capitalizing on its members’ maturing craftsmanship.
Gutierrez’s classically trained voice, Burgos’ electronic whimsy and de Leon’s complex time signatures culminated in ten tracks of English-free songs that thrust them into the Pitchfork-fueled indie spotlight and garnered them international airplay, a Stateside tour, a Latin Grammy and praise for being a more passionate, Mexican version of Canadian sweethearts Metric.
But that was merely the old Hello Seahorse!.
“Bestia really opened a lot of opportunities for us,” Gutierrez said.
“But it got to be too much. We weren’t prepared to have everyone falling over us. We were so young. We had to grow.”
They were supposed to be on a break in Mexico City for a month, but the band returned to the city after only a week and quickly decided to tell their label they were ready to record a new album.
“It would have been really sad to put those songs away and forget about them,” Gutierrez said.
“Other people thought we were crazy and that we were going to make something terrible, but this was a new year and we were new people with new ideas — it was just something we needed to do.”
Despite the fact that the entire album went from jam session to a mastered copy in less than four months, Lejos. No Tan Lejos — which translates to “Far. Not so far away” — is the band’s most artfully composed and musically adventurous album to date.
Full of dark synth melodies and lyrics, Lejos, which was released on iTunes in the United States on Tuesday, doesn’t get stuck in your head like previous albums, but that’s exactly the point.
Scaling back from the band’s previous spritely hooks, Lejos’ mellow electronics take a more somber tone, and it’s here that Gutierrez’s voice shines. Acting as an instrument unto itself, her vocals soar above cloudy beats, communicating emotion that the music cannot do alone.
Like an opera singer, Gutierrez’s vocals express feelings beyond the all-Spanish words she is singing so that her message is clear even to those who haven’t met their foreign language requirement.
“It’s actually more fun knowing you have to prove to yourself that you have to be so expressive that someone who doesn’t speak your language is going to understand your emotions,” Gutierrez said.
Instead of trying to appeal to certain fan bases or waiting for record label approval of their ideas, Hello Seahorse! lives in the moment.
Gutierrez and her bandmates find no shame in changing their style.
It’s part of their growing process both as individuals and as a group, and Gutierrez is the first to admit there is much more to learn.
“I think a lot of things have been done already,” Gutierrez said. “But we’re always looking for something different.”
Hello Seahorse! will be performing at the El Rey Theater on Saturday at 8 p.m.
Correction: An earlier version of this article implied that Hello Seahorse! garnered international acclaim for Hoy a Las Ocho. That description in fact applies to Bestia, a different album. The article also mischaracterized the band’s Thursday night show as a launch party.