When I first moved to New York, I worked at a small bookstore on the Upper West Side. Sometimes I restocked shelves upstairs, but more often than not, I was at the register in the basement where all the used books were sold. There was also an entire shelf devoted to those puzzle books that was exclusively perused by old men that liked to mutter. It felt like a Sudoku graveyard. The heat didn't really work down there either, so I'd mostly just stand around blowing into my hands while keeping a casual eye on the puzzle dudes. Also at the register was an old Mac with only a random selection of Pixies songs on it. I would pass the time down there mostly alone, counting minutes in Pixies songs. How many Pixies songs until lunch? How many until the end of the day? You'd think that using a band's output as a way to measure time would make me not enjoy listening to it, but, weirdly, it had the opposite effect—and now I think of those aimless days with a kind of slacker-fondness. I was having my own Generation X experience many years after that generation had grown up, all I needed was a band to call my own to soundtrack it—and as great as The Pixies are, they'd already been claimed. It's quite possible that if I'd had Hunters’ "Street Trash," I would have gone on to make my own early 2000s version of Clerks except I would be the only character, and there'd probably be a lot of boring talk about crossword puzzles. That said, "Street Trash" is great on its own. It's dingy and catchy and just the right amount of sloppy. I'm not saying it sounds exactly like The Pixies, but it's also a comparison worth noting. Hunters exist on their own too, carving out a nice place for themselves inside a sound that still has plenty of interesting directions left to go in.
Stream: Hunters, "Street Trash"
6/18 Brooklyn, NY Death By Audio
7/16 Columbus, OH The Basement*
7/17 Chicago, IL Empty Bottle*
7/18 Indianapolis, IN White Rabbit Cabaret*
7/19 St. Louis, MO The Firebird*
7/20 Lincoln, NE Bourbon Theatre*
7/23 Nashville, TN Mercy Lounge*
7/24 Atlanta, GA Drunken Unicorn*
7/25 Charlotte, NC Tremont Music Hall*
7/26 Washington, DC The Rock and Roll Hotel*
7/27 Brooklyn, NY Music Hall of Williamsburg*
7/29 Cambridge, MA Middle East – Downstairs*
7/30 Hamden, CT The Space*
* with A Place to Bury Strangers
