…Soaked in blood, YARD OF BLONDES – Hummingbird
Yard of Blondes – Hummingbird is available at Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music.
by Walter Price
Make all the comparisons to QOTSA, Sleep, or Fu Manchu you can muster, but when you embark on listening to the churning recent single, “Hummingbird”, from LA-based Yard of Blondes, be prepared for some heavy social consciousness wrapped up in perhaps this year’s crunchiest indie rock n roll track. Produced by Biohazard’s Billy Graziadei, this intense look at how America is coping with so much all at once grabs your attention with its countdown intro that leads immediately into a jugular-clinching 3 minutes of melodic powder-keg rock.
After the rush to your head has calmed a bit, consider the song’s thought-provoking backstory, as explained on the band’s Bandcamp page, “The song was written after the Ferguson protests and the assassination of Michael Brown. It came also after another school mass shooting. Being in the US for only a few years at this time, that’s when we came to realize America was dealing with a lot of things that were unresolved for decades and centuries. The growing appeal for conspiracies and alternative narratives took also a great part in writing this song. Ironically, in the music video, we tried to picture an invisible threat coming at people, something like a virus, destroying our community. Now that we are in an actual pandemic the song takes another meaning.”
Powerful realities we’ve all been coping with for what seems like forever now. And if these weighty issues being dealt with here aren’t enough to make you ponder, check out the accompanying film. At the corner of Hitchcock and John Carpenter is the best way to prepare you for this high anxiety music video. Images of people being chased by the unknown, turning to see their pursuer, and it’s never made very clear if they recognize what it is that’s making them scared. Chilling. And kudos to the editing mastermind, this film is a quick-cut mini-horror film that’ll keep you up at night.
“Hummingbird” is the last single before the band drops their debut album ‘Feed the Moon’ on May 19, 2021. And you can stream this track as well as witness its jaw-dropping video, now at the GTC.
YARD OF BLONDES – Hummingbird
Band photo via Facebook
Fanny Hill
Vincent Walter Jacob
Burak Yerebakan
Forrest Mitchell
The song is the result of a collaboration between Yard of Blondes and Billy Graziadei (from Biohazard) who produced the album. Michael Patterson (Nine Inch Nails, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Beck..) took care of the mix, and Maor Applebaum (Faith No More) mastered the album.
Music video created by Yard of Blondes
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It’s happening again
It’s not a crime to shoot a humming hovering around
It’s happening again in my town
They’re killing hummingbirds
Soaked in blood…