Hawkbaby

Reviews

Hawkbaby Stupid Music for Stupid People LP

Debut LP from these Clevelanders, featuring members of INMATES, FOLDED SHIRT, WETBRAIN, and a bunch of other bands. These guys take the irreverent, artsy, frat-rock punk of BLACK RANDY & THE METROSQUAD, add a dash of RICHARD HELL, then absolutely infuse the shit out of that with pure Ohio weirdness. Seriously, try to listen to this record and pretend it was made in any other state—you can’t do it! The LP is funny without being joky, deliriously nerdy, and just absolutely stupid. It’s great! Listen if you like any of the aforementioned bands, PERVERTS AGAIN (et al.), or FINAL SOLUTIONS. Highlight track is “Pop Punk SML.”

Hawkbaby Hawkbaby demo cassette

Six songs of mid-tempo punk. Plodding, heavy-sounding riffs with noisy leads spattered atop. I was going to make a comparison of the vocalist sounding like Larry from the DARVOCETS/WETBRAIN, but the more I’m looking into this, I wouldn’t be surprised if it is actually him. The label is from Cleveland, after all, and I can’t picture another city in the world that would be churning out this kind of punk. A few of the songs sound a bit like the same rewritten song, making the tape blend together slightly, but it’s a pretty damn good song, so why deviate from a formula that works? I listen to music every day at my house, and the low end on this recording is so heavy that it rumbled my speakers, shifting a glass overhead light cover that was balanced on the speaker for the past year or so, sending it crashing to the ground mere feet from where I was standing. It seems even listening to HAWKBABY is potentially dangerous, and this recording has truly captured the essence of Cleveland.