Back in April, I compared Hey Anna's sound to "a dreamy landscape you can see flickering on a movie screen in your mind's eye." That uncharacteristically flowery description for me, which I used in relation to the band's single "Island," is only bolstered by a listen to Hey Anna's first full-length, Run Koko.
Music and visuals go hand in hand inside my brain. Every song or album I listen to rolls off in my head like a little movie, and the visuals that I get when listening to Run Koko come from a different time. This time has a nostalgic feel to it, maybe hazy and sepia-toned; but it also isn't fully recognizable as the past. It's another place, built up from the feelings of childhood, summer, the sky, the sea, the sun, and holding hands. Again with the purple prose. I can't help it.
The set opens with "Island." "I've been running in a circle / I've been running on an island / Can't remember the beginning / Can't remember how it started." And, right there, we're in a dream. Plopped down right in the middle of something that we feel like has just always been. The song even rolls in like one of those rippling imagination sequences from TV before Jamie DiTringo's guitar begins to chime and the sisters Erin, Anna, and Katie Rauch-Sasseen begin to harmonize.
The theme of childhood connects the next two tracks. "Cloudbird" starts with a clockwork or music box-sounding intro, moving into keys and guitars that alternately swirl around and buffet you as if you're living out the narrator's dream of flight. "By The Bay," which was nominated last year for an Asbury Music Award, opens with a sample of a young British girl instructing you on how to, presumably, jump rope. The song borrows words from classic jump rope songs "Miss Mary Mack" and "Cinderella" while creating images of a far-off tropical beach.
The urgent, surf-tinged guitars of "Move Your Body" egg on the guy addressed in the song to live for the moment and make his move. Things get psychedelic, and DiTringo shows some of his hard rock inclinations, on single "Don't Talk Stop." Matt Langner's drums and cymbal crashes play right into the slightly more rocking feel of this one. Langner also drives the dreamy, synthy "Anaphaze," a clever take on the "put down your phone and try something real" theme we hear a lot these days: "Glittering rays of sun on her skin / Radiating what you need / ... / But you don't see / You don't see."
"Little Things" is a song I could see being done acoustically in singer / songwriter style. The reverb, the soaring and distant vocals, and the intertwining guitar lines keep the song tethered to that same dreamworld we've been living in to this point, though. The mini sonic explosion that comes about three minutes in is wholly satisfying.
Run Koko closes with "Mt. Picchu." The sisters' voices bounce around inside the church-like hall created by the music as they harmonize on "And that'd be heaven / Be heaven to me."
The last lyric on the album is "We'll cheat time and get there," and it's a nice summation of the whole feel of Run Koko. Hey Anna's debut LP feels like it exists somewhere outside of time and space, but it's a place you feel like you know. A place you've really loved. You can listen to Run Koko, and -- for about an hour or so -- you can go back there.
Run Koko is out now. You can head over to Hey Anna's Bandcamp page to stream / purchase it. Hey Anna celebrate Run Koko's release tonight with a late set at The Saint. Doors for that one open at 10pm.
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