FLOATING NOW

Hard Girls (whose name is a reverential nod to the Soft Boys, an early influence on the band) spent?several years on the road touring with Say Anything, Modern Baseball, AJJ, and Cymbals Eat Guitars?among others before returning to the Atomic Garden studio to record Floating Now with engineer Jack?Shirley (Deafheaven, Joyce Manor). Their new record doubles down on the bold, introspective?post-punk that has become the band's calling card, while channeling a weird, insistent melodicism not?unlike 90's giants Lou Barlow and Robert Pollard.?Alternating vocal duties, guitarist Mike Huguenor's lyrics are poetic and furious, while bassist Morgan?Herrell favors a Bradbury-like style of folksy storytelling, but both cohesively explore themes of?mortality, doubt, and the struggle to confront these fears. While the trio's hometown of San Jose, CA is?poised to be the site of a sprawling new Google campus, it is already the poster child for the alienating?class-divide of the new tech economy, embodied by soaring real estate prices and sweeping?homelessness. In an interview with the AV Club, Huguenor explained that 'Guadalupe On The Banks?Of The Styx' is a song about a place that was once beautiful - where anyone could find peace for just?the cost of crossing the river - but has, in our lifetime, become a place of lost and wandering souls. On?album closer Running Herrell asks in heartbreaking fashion, possibly to an average, struggling San?Jose resident, or possibly to the area's tech overlords, Every day of your life you try to prove it was?worth it all to them. Was it worth it' I don't know, ask me again.