Herrick & Hooley Take Portmanteau’s To A New Level With ‘Texoma’ [@herrick_hooley]

Texoma for Ian Olney, Hunter Lewis and Michael Barnes represents tranquility. It represents growth to a degree. The trio make up Herrick & Hooley, a group of future twentysomethings (they’re college freshmen) who enjoy the chill drive towards laying up and letting the world come to you as opposed to facing it head on. There’s a spacial moment right around “Beach”, the album’s second track where wind chimes transform into drowsy synths that rise and fall like the sun on your skin in the summer.

Onley talks of Texoma much like Richard Linklater’s Boyhood film. It’s a central location, a portmanteau of Texas & Oklahoma that for the Herrick & Hooley trio equates to a lake. It’s where they went as teenagers, boys still figuring out girls, love and the future. Life has split them from physically enjoying Lake Texoma but the Herrick & Hooley boys still speak of it with reverence. Even if they lay their heads in Colorado & Utah for higher education, they still sing of the love discovered at the lake and the memories that it brings up.

“Texoma is about going from childhood to adulthood and all the shit you have to deal with when that happens. It’s a concept album that follows kind of a story. Texoma was a place we went to a lot in high school, but right now we’re farther west. Texoma was kind of a metaphor for all the good things about our childhood.”

The whimsy behind Texoma is what one could expect from a trio of teens still adjusting to facing actual responsibility. A feature in the Dallas Observer revealed how the band managed to release a project shipping segments of songs amongst emails in school. It also reveals why music, especially the jazzy, light and sometimes hazy folk that incorporates Texoma exists in the first place. “Swim With Me” lays with tracked out drums and Onley’s vocals stretched into a falsetto that mixes both seduction and optimism. “Let me know, if we can swim all night,” he asks to a woman in particular. It’s what he wants most – love and understanding.

Texoma is a Dallas affair with Cameron McCloud (ThatKidCam), -topic and KoolQuise all providing guest verses along the bridge of R&B, soul, hip-hop and teenage daydream. It’s light enough to find yourself enveloped and packs the sort of teenage mystery that comes with any young musician. Growing apart was one of the major focuses of life, especially regarding long-standing friendships. Texoma isn’t Gravity Falls for the Herrick & Hooley trio. It still is a land of uniqueness that produces soemthing rather special, especially for Dallas.

Stream Texoma in full below via the band’s Soundcloud page.

[Central Track]