Calling Hours have announced their album ‘Say Less‘ through Revelation Records on November 10th – it’s also a debut showcase from the East Coast punk/rock band featuring veteran vocalist Popeye Vogelsang (Farside) and members of the band Don’t Sleep.
An outcome of various collaborations, ‘Say Less’ revisits the band members’ melodic punk sensibilities while working in a decidedly contemporary direction. Produced by the legendary Brian McTernan (Turnstile, Hot Water Music, Thrice), the band is also a deep dive into the feelings of displacement and discomfort that punctuated Popeye’s move from California to Pennsylvania a few years back – a meditation on the intersection of sense of place and sense of self.
Accompanying the announcement is the windows-down, heartland punk of ‘Curtain Call,‘ an obvious single choice to lead the album because it begins with unmistakable vocals being heard front and center. “It’s an instant reminder to Popeye’s fans from his days singing in Farside that his voice is simultaneously uplifting and heavy, soulful and gritty, and powerful and vulnerable,” bassist Garrett Rothman said. “For many of his fans, hearing his voice on ‘Curtain Call’ will be like running into an old friend you haven’t seen in years – all the good feelings from the past will immediately come rushing back to you.”
The official story of the band more accurately begins in 2021, but for vocalist Popeye Vogelsang, the story actually unfolds a few years earlier. “I was living alone in a one-bedroom apartment in a 1940s building in Los Angeles,” he recalls. “It was a seven-minute walk to Trader Joe’s, an eight-minute walk to my bank, and a nine-minute walk to the post office. I was doing voiceover work full-time. When I had free time, I’d walk to one of the local parks and have a sandwich under a tree. It was like living inside of the Andy Griffith show – like I was living in Mayberry, where every day was a sunny day.”
As an established fixture in Southern California—both personally and creatively as the former frontman for melodic hardcore greats Farside – there was little in his routine to suggest at that point that his life was headed for any sort of major change. “It felt like an ideal life, in fact, until it didn’t. It was very solitary, and I guess I was OK with that—or at least I told myself that I was OK with that—until I met the woman who is now my wife,” he explains. “That absolutely changed everything.” Among those changes, frontmen uprooted his entire life to move cross-country to the decidedly less metropolitan city of Scranton, PA, where he would eventually come to meet the rest of his new band—guitarists Thomas McGrath and Tony Bavaria, bassist Garrett Rothman, and drummer Jim Bedorf—at the tail end of 2021.
2‘Say Less‘ tracklist:
1. Cardboard & Aluminum
2. Curtain Call
3. Gin Perry
4. Low End Theory
5. Why Did It Have To Be Snakes?
6. Heavy Future
7. Alex Chilton