The Happy Hollows reveal the power in Spells — and commercials

By Katherine Hoffert
Published: February 16th, 2010 | 9:00pm

Sarah Negahdari is the ultimate rock idol. Completely herself and certainly unforgettable onstage, her hero–worthy guitar chops and unapologetic zeal are outright liberating. This isn’t posturing or marketing; it’s what happens when you refuse to give away your power.

The front woman for the L.A.–based art-rock trio the Happy Hollows explains, “Growing up, you’re bombarded with this notion that you, as you are, is not okay. You have to have certain cheekbones and hair and boobs ... You grow up feeling like half a person. So it’s very refreshing and empowering, as a woman, to realize, ‘Wow, I don’t have to have this cookie-cutter look, and I don’t have to give away my power,’ since so much of what we define as sexy is a woman so obviously giving away her power instead of emanating self-love.”

Negahdari found her match in bassist Charlie Mahoney and drummer Chris Hernandez, kindred musical spirits from D.C. with a knack for getting their hands dirty and a common distaste for treading too close to trends. Whether it’s onstage, in their songwriting, or in the realm of labels and licensing — throughout their four-year narrative, the Happy Hollows have stood firmly behind the belief that doing things your own way is always more satisfying in the end. Recalling the events of the past few months, including the release of their first full-length album, Spells (Autumn Tone), nabbing the highly coveted Spaceland Monday Night Residency, scoring a Samsung commercial, and, most recently, having their music video for “Death to Vivek Kemp” voted into rotation on mtvU by their fans (check out the video here), it’s hard not to agree.

“Two years into it, we started getting a lot of local buzz and a lot of labels were talking to us,” Negahdari says. “ I just felt there was so much input around me in terms of ‘Oh, you gotta write more songs like this’ or ‘You gotta look like this,’ and it was so overwhelming. We couldn’t let the machine start sucking us up at that point, so we had to kind of pull back.”

This decision to let the band develop naturally resulted in the masterpiece of a debut that is Spells. Easily one of the best albums 2010 has seen, Spells is an imaginative, energizing romp through vivid melodies, shape-shifting vocals, hot-tempered rhythms, and rock opera dynamics. It’s beautiful and ugly, childlike and surreal, and one hundred percent Hollows — right down to the watercolor album art. In the finger-tapped “Lieutenant,” the wild catharsis of “Tambourine,” and the off-kilter pop of “Death to Vivek Kemp,” Negahdari’s instinct on guitar is awe-inspiring.

“The guitar is so powerful!” Negahdari says. “It’s so traditionally seen as a man’s instrument. That’s why this Samsung commercial was so powerful for me. When they were filming, I saw the storyboard laid out and there was a man’s hand playing, a man’s face sweating — they intended it for a man. And to see a woman’s hand and fingernails ... It’s real, this dream that I was way too nerdy or shy to ever accomplish, it’s a reality now.”

The commercial was significant on many levels, as it also established licensing as a workable revenue option. Mahoney offers this perspective: “I was reading an article about Paul Simon, and he released a single really early in his career that sold 100,000 copies, and it was considered a failure. Today, if you sell 100,000 copies, you’re the biggest band in the United States! It’s really crazy, the change that has happened. Everyone’s just kind of accepted now that for artists to have careers, they’re going to have to do some licensing. But it’s actually a much more powerful model [than the label model], in a sense, because you don’t have to give up your masters and you own all your intellectual property.”

Needless to say, what’s paid the highest dividends for the Happy Hollows can’t be found in any industry model: “People have to understand that you have to be very brave and just be yourself,” Negahdari concludes.

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Happy Hollows official site

Happy Hollows MySpace page

Autumn Tone Records