Half Sour at Innocent Words

As the legend goes, Halfsour started out as a Guided By Voices cover band. Well, you can sort of hear it if you squint your ears. But this coed trio from Boston actually reminds one a lot of the harder-edged indie pop bands of the late ’90s/early ’00s, specifically New Grenada (of whom they are a dead-ringer) and Wolfie (and its many off-shoots, such as the Like Young and National Splits). Halfsour songs are generally short and punchy – only a few times do they pass the three-minute mark, blasting you with catchy guitar melodies and bratty boy/girl vocals.

Following up a short-run demo tape and a split 12″ EP with Reports on Ride The Snake Records, ‘Tuesday Night Live’ (Jigsaw Records) is Halfsour’s debut album, and it certainly shows a lot of promise – definitely a band to watch out for!

The Story Behind “Sensitive Rugby”

“So there was this one time that Ian (drummer) and his girlfriend Chrissy had to kill a bunch of time in Somerville, so they went to some weird Irish bar. It was completely empty when they got there, but then filled up pretty much immediately with what ended up being the Irish Hurling champion team (who Ian remembers as being from Cork). They all watched the match at the bar and then at the end of the game there was an announcer with a microphone who called each player up one at a time to congratulate them. The rest of the bar made a tunnel that they had to run down in order to get to the announcer in some weird surreal football-esque format. That is where the song “Sensitive Rugby” came from.

“Sensitive Rugby” was the first song Halfsour wrote with Ian on vocals. Ian wrote the lyrics five minutes before recording them after having played the song for months without any. The vocals were recorded 30 minutes after Ian ate maybe 15 latkes and about a week before Ian moved to California for four months.”

Check out these first single and album lead in track “Sensitive Rugby” exclusivley

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