Hunting Club

Hunting Club takes aim with its debut self-titled LP: Drawing from a range of artists (Elliott Smith, the Pixies, Portishead and Prince) Hunting Club melts away the thick ice of Minnesota by creating a lush and highly orchestrated sound that bends the ear with drones of happiness and sadness. A group of multi-instrumentalists who oscillate between keys, drums, guitars, and auxiliaries (sometimes mid-song), Hunting Club's approach to songwriting leaves each song to grow within its own fragile space. The band's first full-length album was recorded over several months in the Club's home-recording studio in Northeast Minneapolis, in Vaudeville Studios with Jeff Halland (Houston, Rockford Mules, Casanatra). - BMI

Hunting Club is releasing two new tracks on August 23rd of this year. Both tracks on this two-song release are gems that you’ll want to get your hands on, but the first track, entitled “Bangkok”, suggest a great growth in the band’s sound and dynamic. There are more layers, more atmosphere, better hooks, and their notable brilliant dynamic changes are far more brilliant than they ever have been before. Hunting Club creates the feel of chamber pop without the chamber orchestra, with the Steen brothers acting as precisely as an orchestra director would. They plan on releasing their follow-up L.P. in the fall.

Purchase their two new tracks, “”Bangkok” and “In A Villa”, on iTunes or from the band’s website on August 23rd, but for now you can listen to them here. - Banana Static

I’m working from my home office this morning, which is a Dunn Bros a block from my house in a 100 year old storefront building with a tin roof and those cool rotating ceiling fans that spin even when they aren’t turned on.
I snagged a seat at the “bar” and have been more productive in the last two hours than I was in 9 hours sitting in my proper office yesterday.
With my headphones on and a steady wifi connection, I’m oblivious to the snow flurries and cares of the world.
But then I happened to check my PP inbox and right at the top was a note from Eric Pasi of Hunting Club.
The Minneapolis-based group is previewing the first song from their forthcoming sophomore album St., and it’s a bit of a leap into new territory for the fivesome.
Skyscraper by huntingclub
With pulsating electronic beats atop smooth synths and hypnotic vocals, I like where Hunting Club is headed on its latest foray into the wilderness to kill and maim whatever crosses its path.

I’ve now listened to this song 10 times in a row. I need a coffee refill and am going to wait for the track to end before getting up. Can’t wait for the LP. - Perfect Porridge

Minneapolis’ Hunting Club nails its debut by crafting an album full of great hooks and plenty of jam-happy, cacophonous instrumentation. On tracks like “Saucy Banana” and “Real Chance,” the post-shoegazers set their best driving, Broken Social Scene-doppelganger jangle as a backdrop before jolting into melodious, fire-spitting choruses. Elsewhere, much of the lyrical content matches the sober and oftentimes stark feel of the album, with lost love being central to “Alamo” (“I’ll be there to follow her around / Someday with luck I’ll finally hold her”) and utter contempt beaming in “Rising Arizona” (“Days and nights I’ve been trailin’ you / Days and nights till my face turns blue”). But there's also something funnily Minnesotan in the slow-building “Gold Wheat,” which has lead singer Eric Pasi crooning about the one that got away: “Put your makeup on, you're my trophy catch / I wanna hang you up from my weighty wall.”
As much as Hunting Club may be trying to capture the same pop orchestration as Grizzly Bear circa Yellow House, its music is a bit more straightforward than the Brooklyn band’s arty chamber-pop. And there’s certainly an air of confidence that makes this debut more than just another one-off introductory statement. Is it over-calculated? Sometimes. Is it forced? No. Instead, it's more of an exercise in layers and textures than it is a collection of full-blown, riff-happy rockers.
Hunting Club plays with Red Daughters and Battle Royale tonight at the Triple Rock Social Club. - AV Club

WHY THEM? Does Doug Martsch singing over Interpol rhythms and New Pornographers melodic flourishes sound like an absolutely terrible combination or one so wonderful you're shocked nobody has thought of it before? Your feelings about the Hunting Club are entirely contingent on your response. Bigger than the sum of their influences, the Minnesota five-piece manages to sound like they've been playing together far longer than two years — as long, in fact, as Midwestern teenagers have been nodding along to guitar-heavy indie rock with unassuming vocals. Gathering a head of steam in the Twin Cities club scene can lead to great things (see: Hüsker Dü, Soul Asylum).

BONUS BIT! Everyone knows Minnesota birthed Prince and the Replacements, but few are aware that Yanni played keys in several Twin Cities rock bands in the '70s. - Boston Phoenix

If you think the Age of Irony has killed all the earnest, enterprising bands in our post-2000s purgatory, I present to you Hunting Club .
The band — whose solemn sounds have the mind of Elliot Smith, the ear of Brian Wilson, the stomach of the Pixies and the hooves of White Rabbits — will present their self-titled follow-up to last year’s buzzed “Pretty/Ugly” EP to an eager crowd at Sauce Spirits and Soundbar on Friday.
With some positive online reviews already under its belt, the event is sure to up their momentum.
Three members of the five-member band, formed in 2008, hail from the small town of New Richmond, Wisconsin, with the other two raised in St. Paul. Member Kyle Steen is a sociology senior at the University of Minnesota.
Their rich and textured self-titled LP, in classic Beatles, Jay-z and Spinal Tap -fashion, is aka “The Plaid Album” due to its, well, plaid album artwork.
"[The artwork being plaid] was really a propos to the music from my vantage point," songwriter Eric Pasi said. "It sounds a little grainy, a little distant. It sounds conflicting and it has patterns.
"We use a lot of droney delay and reverb to texturize things and layer it," he added.
In this day and age, many artists of all trades walk on eggshells to avoid making anything too overtly sad (or even earnest), lest they get thrown under the stigmatized "emo" rug. Hunting Club is armed and unafraid.
"I don't think [our music] is overwhelmingly sad," Pasi said. "But life is filled with ups and downs, so the album has its highlight moments of upbeat tracks and more subdued tracks."
The Club’s complex yet instantly accessible tunes made them a buzz band in 2009, earning them a spot in Vita.mn’s Are You Local? competition. But the boys aren’t getting too worked up about that — they just want to pay for gas.
"We're going global; maybe interstellar," Pasi joked. "But, as far as expectations for the album, we just want to make something we enjoy, and something that will permit us to get on the road."
As one of the better venues in the area, Sauce should be a sufficient shelter for the band’s make-or-break showcase.
"It's a nice space,” Pasi said. “It's like a mass exodus from Lake Street, which has pushed a lot of the art scene in Uptown towards Lyndale," he said.
As an oft-blogged-about band playing a CD release at a venue that beckons the hippest of the hip, they must be prepping for a lot of people, right?
"If my mom shows up I'll be happy," Pasi said. - Minnesota Daily

Did you know that tweed and plaid are all the rage this fall? We didn't either. But Vogue wants to help you flesh out all your must-have accessories for the season with their guide of 100 items for under $100, from skirts and jackets to stationary, wallets, compacts, and... the debut album by Twin Cities rock band Hunting Club?

Nevermind that there are only 82 items on their list of "100 items" or that an album is a sort of awkward fashion accessory -- dude, Hunting Club is featured in Vogue today! Hilarious and awesome.

The band's debut, The Plaid Album, features handmade album art with their name stitched into a swatch of scratchy plaid cloth. While the editors of Vogue may not be rocking out to the band's catchy indie rock tunes as they type, they have an eye for good design and Hunting Club's record is certainly unique. Props to the band for scoring this cool, if random, nod from a national outlet.

"Lifelong dream fulfilled," tweeted bassist Nate Dykstra.

Now, if we could just get Redbook to take a look at this Moonstone album art... - City Pages

On their first full length album, Minneapolis’ own Hunting Club have exceeded all expectations by crafting an album worthy of praise and attention outside of the local scene. From the instrumental lead-in track “How’d it all get Burned”, a track which sounds eerily familiar to Broken Social Scene’s instrumental go around, to the compounding and powerful “Cactai” which rounds out the 11 track debut, Hunting Club have distinguished themselves as a band ripe with talent and a perfect album in-tow.
From the outset of this album, and something I’ve always thought about Hunting Club, is that their sound is instantly recognizable. Not in a bad, “Hey this is just a [insert band x] rip-off” sort of way, but in the sense that their current influences are not hidden. I already made the Broken Social Scene comparison on the instrumental tracks, but on the whole, Hunting Club remind me of The Walkmen’s latest efforts combined with the attitude of Dr. Dog. I use these comparisons merely as a way to contextualize The Plaid Album in the broader scope of the music scene, but Hunting Club undoubtedly create their own niche not only in the Minneapolis market but on the national scale as well.
MP3 :: Hunting Club – “Rocket Man”
Take the track “Rocket Man” for instance, my personal favorite on the album, and a sonically bold statement about what Hunting Club are capable of. I always thought their EP was a bit timid, but from the second that the dueling side sticks catch the attention of the listener the boisterously perfect vocals join in and explode into a track that is part shoegaze bliss and indie rock combined. Maybe I’m just getting sentimental and this track is making me second guess my move to Portland at the end of the month, but “Rocket Man”‘s lyrics catch my recent train of thoughts right in stride:
“We were careless in letting it go / Since you left we got nothing to show for
Had the coast on your mind / since a friend said that changing could make you right
Trade the lake with the dull / for the shine of a tide and annoying crowd”
But there are plenty of other highlights littered throughout The Plaid Album as well. “Sweet Soprano” is a echoing and reverb filled track that builds to a haunting finish. Filled with a guitar pattern that matches the urgency of the vocal repetition “I can’t leave ya / I can’t leave ya” over and over until the track fades out, “Sweet Soprano” was for me an extremely memorable and perfectly constructed track. There’s also the stellar “Gold Wheat” which was the main basis for my Walkmen comparison. Running throughout the entire track is the echoing crash of a cymbal, fading ever so slightly in and out of the foreground. What eventually occurs is a sort of state of trance that Hunting Club employ to keep the listener tuned into their nuanced stylings.
Is it a back-handed compliment to say that The Plaid Album exceeded all expectations? Probably, but I certainly don’t mean it in that sense. The Hunting Club sound fully confident in what they’re doing, and their music wholeheartedly reflects that power. If you’re looking for an album to enjoy both for its no-frills approach and subtle beauty, Hunting Club’s The Plaid Album will no doubt be one of your favorite albums this summer.
The Plaid Album is out June 4th. Go bother them on Twitter or Facebook to see if you can pre-order a copy. - Beach on the Moon