Hollow Star‘s debut EP Listen dazzles with a striking balance of vulnerability and craft, merging infectious post-punk energy with lush, jangling guitar textures. Micah Lopez, after rebirthing his project under its new moniker, channels formative influences like The Smiths, Joy Division, and The Cure into an intensely personal, immediate sound. Recorded in a one-room Los Angeles apartment, the EP navigates heartbreak, longing, and reflection with compelling immersion.
“Seconds” kickstarts the EP with emotive immediacy, pairing pulsating guitar jangles and bouncy bass with yearning vocal laments — seamlessly shifting from debonair introspections (“why do all of our conversations begin with me?”) and into a soaring “I’m looking for you” admission. The Johnny Marr-esque guitar tones in that delectable chorus combine with brisk verses, showing shades there of Editors, for a replay-inducing opener. The ensuing “Capital” channels a momentum-filled rock vigor, its scathing vocals letting out “I don’t want to see you anymore” as “no! no!” responses exhilarate, its decisiveness in moving on playing like an artful contrast to the opener’s more heartfelt pining.
The EP’s enthralling centerpiece, “Wisdom” achieves a hazy, stream-of-conscious feeling in its heart-on-sleeve vocal processions and textured array of guitars. “Don’t you ever speak my name / I waited long enough for you,” Micah’s vocals let out, continuing a thematic emphasis on love and resulting heartbreak, with the latter resembling being left out in the cold. The track maintains a steadier tonal disposition than the striking shifts apparent elsewhere, though stirs with its authentic emotion, vocally and lyrically. Finale “Ceremony” is another gem, beckoning a Joy Division-esque post-punk energy that swells from plucky intrigue into jangling ardor. Listen is a delight of an EP from Hollow Star, enamoring on all five of its tracks.
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We discovered this release via MusoSoup.
