Definitive and Dazzling Hooray For Earth is big and bold

For those impressed by Hooray For Earth’s 2011 debut, True Loves, the three-year wait for the band’s follow up album, Racy, might have felt like a long time coming.   However, after just one listen to Racy, one can easily reach the conclusion that the wait was worth it. The new record comes in sounding more vast, epic and polished than any of the group’s previous work. Yet it still shows the same careful attention to the details layering, sonic atmosphere and soundscapes, alongside lush arrangements and songwriting which made the band endearing in the first place. CULTURE was able to catch up with the band’s primary songwriter, performer and vocalist, Noel Heroux, and heard all about how Racy came together and his opinions on medical cannabis.

You’ve got a new record entitled Racy that just came out, did you go into the writing and recording process with any specific goals for the album?

Well, we did the last one from a few years ago, True Loves, in a little space that I rented. It wasn’t a real studio or anything, with all of my half-assed gear and all that. So it was kind of put together in a little bit of a haphazard way. Luckily, Chris Coady, who co-produced Racy, was around to mix True Loves. We had such a good time that we both thought that we should make a whole album together. So, fast-forward a year-and-a-half or so, and we were like, “Oh! Let’s make that record together!” So that’s what Racy is.

What was it about Chris Coady’s mixing that you liked so much that made you decide to work with him again?

Well, on the dorky end of it, he just makes shit sound amazing! Really though, it was because we get along really well and it just made sense.

I know you mostly self-produced your first record, True Loves. With Chris Coady helping you produce this one, was there anything challenging about taking some direction from another person?

You know, it totally could have. I’m an admitted control freak in a lot of ways, but we just get along and we understood each other. So there were absolutely no issues.

From a production standpoint, was there any particular sound or vibe you wanted Racy to have?

I guess I mainly just wanted it to sound pretty direct. Basically, I was kind of dumbfounded by some of the comparisons that flew around on the first album. Sometimes I’d hear a comparison and say to myself, “Wow, how does that work?” And it was always shit I’d never heard. I’d read that I was “following in the footsteps” of somebody, and I’d wonder how I could follow in the footsteps of somebody I’d never heard before. So it made me want to make this one a lot more direct, like, “Here’s the f*ckin’ deal: It’s guitar, some keys and singing, here it is.”

You being an artist who has spent a great deal of time the all over the country and world and seen a great amount of the current youth culture, do you have any feelings one way or the other about the current cannabis legalization movements in this country?

You know, I’m not well educated on that whole thing at all, but I absolutely think it should be entirely legal. The fact that people can drink, and that booze is available the way it is, and marijuana isn’t, is actually kind of insane.