HOLLIS BROWN: Ozone Park (POP): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

Hollis Brown is a band formed around singer-guitarist Mike Montali and guitarist Jonathan Bonilla who built a local reputation in New York before releasing their first EP in 2009. Five years later the band consolidated into its current quintet form and released several albums and EPs. It was in 2018 that Hollis Brown signed to Mascot Records and the first record of their collaboration is called "Ozone Park".

From its name taken from a Bob Dylan track 'The Ballad Of Hollis Brown' released in 1964 to the sounds that scatter "Ozone Park", Hollis Brown cultivates a retro sound. The production accurately mixes analog and digital recording for a timeless and balanced rendering. The Americans unroll a colourful and benevolent, quiet and standardized pop like the New York middle class neighborhood to which the album's name refers, which neither upsets nor overturns, with its short and immediate songs in formats that are often harmless mid-tempi. "Ozone Park" ticks all the boxes of the album whose tracks could end up on the soundtrack of the latest Netflix series or the American dramatic comedy in the fall. Moreover, several tracks of the band have been used for this purpose in the past, and we will not be surprised.

A generous blues-soul-pop mix with reverberation over here ('Stubborn Man'), a choir from'Oo, Oo, Oo' over there ('Blood From A Stone'), a folk cover that blurs all the relief of the original ('She Don't Love Me Now' by Jesse Malin) and a few excesses of fuzz guitar for slumming (the two minutes of 'Bad Mistakes'), "Ozone Park" plays the diversity card while focusing on safety. Few audacity and hardly more originality but nevertheless nine tracks (we will pass on the uninteresting interlude "After The Fire") which stand in terms of melodies and interpretation and which are therefore easily listened to not without a certain pleasure devoid of guilt.

Sometimes it is the records that were least suspected that make the most impression. "Ozone Park" will not go down in history of music but could have a small existence and reach an audience in an unexpectedly successful film. It could also integrate the heterogeneous but nevertheless precious list of records that are chosen when you have nothing to listen to. - Official website

HOLLIS BROWN

OZONE PARK

MASCOT LABEL GROUP

POP