Max Hellmann, Drew Mottinger, and Patrick Doyle all cut their teeth in various bands around Los Angeles (Controlling The Famous, Sputnik Monroe, Wintergreen) before ending up in Hotel For Strangers in 2014. At the onset of the new venture, the trio overhauled their approach for this debut five song EP, bringing in two drummers and female vocal harmonies that match hooks with samples and electronic beats. <\/p>\n
With dual vocals from Hellmann and Mottinger (and occasionally Jessica Gerhardt\u2019s sweet pipes) to help flesh out this brief listen, Hotel For Strangers <\/i>needs to make quick work to grab our attention and that is easily accomplished with the first track, \u201cWork.\u201d Armed with an arena rock chorus and more hooks than a fisherman’s tackle box, it’s a memorable electro-pop opener that\u2019s both muscular and gentle. \u201cBat Face Girl\u201d follows with a calmer approach (though it’s no less interesting) with fluttering synth and emotive singing, before the contemplative \u201cCome Around.\u201d Stacked with a sleek and hypnotic undercurrent, this track could easily take over the FM dial in today\u2019s electro-pop friendly culture. <\/p>\n
The second half of the disc brings us \u201cMake Me Alive,\u201d where playful keys meet marching band drumming that starts out restrained and erupts into an explosive pop anthem with great, breathy singing. The five-song listen closes on \u201cSpiritual Cowboy,\u201d a fuller and more rock-oriented end with multiple voices, prominent keys, and an introspective backdrop; it\u2019s one of the few moments where you can truly tell there are six members in this band. <\/p>\n
Hotel For Strangers<\/i> is an EP where each subsequent song gets substantially better. Considering that it starts out well above average \u2013 nearly at The Postal Service level of greatness \u2013 this is a wonderful thing for fans of the genre that prefer both acoustic and electronic sources of their indie pop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":32845,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[9880],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-44618","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-hotel-for-strangers","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/89"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44618"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44618"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}