Hectorina / Collywobble: A Rock Opera

Filed in

Album Reviews | Released

Hectorina / Collywobble: A Rock Opera
(Unsigned)
**
The concept album is a mysterious and at times mind boggling thing. A band can decide to create a story through an LP that is subtle and difficult to differentiate from a single led album, or they could decide to go full blown and write about the secret life of sea monkeys and the hardships of living underwater. There is generally two different ways to go about creating a concept album – you either make it blatantly obvious and shout it from the rooftops like the latter example, or keep it closed and let the listener figure it out for themselves. Hectorina, a self-described psychedelic math pop band from Charlotte, North Carolina, have gone down the more obvious route with their debut LP ‘Collywobble: A Rock Opera’ which, in the band’s own words: “follows the story of an ex-astronaut who joins a group of explorers on their quest to find the gateway to heaven before they battle a giant owl from another dimension.” Now as mental as this sounds Hectorina are being completely serious. This is a rock opera (cringe) and it deals with the important and often overlooked subject of giant owls from other dimensions that shoot lazers from their eyes – as it is depicted on the album’s front cover.

There is a back story to this madness and surprisingly to my knowledge it doesn’t involve heaps of acid, long beards and kaleidoscopes. Before Hectorina and this 23-track mammoth of an album dropped singer-songwriter and leader of Hectorina, 25-year-old Dylan Gilbert, had been writing songs since he was a teen. This passion then grew into a band as Gilbert recruited friends Zachary Jordan, 24 and John Harrell III, 23. They named themselves Dylan Gilbert’s Overeasy Breakfast Machine, however, Gilbert became bored with writing the same songs and wanted to create something completely crazy and insane: “In 2009 I remember telling a friend, ‘I want to do something completely crazy and don’t hold anything back, whether people think it’s silly or stupid.’ You have fun with every record you make, but I never felt like I went all out. I’m going to have this giant rock opera and it’s going to be ridiculous,” and ridiculous it is, I’m just not sure whether that is a good thing or not just yet.

Although the band call themselves a psychedelic math pop band it is hard to see where this evaluation comes from. Although the concept is about as stereotypically psychedelic as you could hope to get without actually beaming the album down from space, the band has such a varied style and sound that each song could belong to a completely different genre. Opener ‘The Return To Earth Overture’ and ‘Jonah, King Of The Space Programme’ melt seamlessly into each other and do hold hints of psychedelia, but more of fast-paced grandiose rock n’ roll. ‘Animals Eat Each Other All The Time’ exhibits influence from Bright Eyes and offers a much softer texture to the rest of the album. From here on in the record travels through a series of strange soundscapes and songs through its midsection which illustrate the story line including; ‘An Inter-dimensional Spat For The Right To Walk Away The Victor’, ‘God Help Us’, ‘The Ship Is Sinking’ and ‘Die Devil Bird’, all of which seem to portray the battle between Jonah Collywobble, Captain Arthur Frendreczeco, First Mate Robert “Mondo” Monduligan, Astrid Cuttlefish, The Mermaid and the oversized Hedwig from space.

This concept album is one which shouts and screams “We want to be as crazy as possible!” In my humble opinion this can sometimes lead to an atmosphere of desperation. The Flaming Lips can somehow pull it off, but for Hectorina it just seems a bit forced. Although the music is, for the most part, well written and can at times sound great it just seems like the band have tried too hard to do something weird. Don’t get me wrong I love strange music but for some reason it does not hold my attention as it would if they had dropped the ridiculous story-line and instead concentrated on making the sound psychedelic as well as the concept.

Sam Willis