The Margaret Hooligans “Hey Love”
With spacious guitar riff and hypnotic, marching rhythm, “Hey Love” floats between The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the rawest authentic garage rock. Simple, but unbending. Rich in its aesthetic. As a two-piece band, The Margaret Hooligans surprises you. Their captivating melodic storytelling is as hypnotic as it is addictive. With one foot in the pentatonic modal wheel of fortune while the other steps into a sultry, space-out psychedelic visualization, “Hey Love” is inventive and uniquely delicious.
“Hey Love” follows “Doggie Pizza Crust” to be the latest release from The Margaret Hooligans’ upcoming third album Saturday Night at Bartertown. If anything that we have learned about the extraordinary two-piece band is the amount of love and fierce sonic instinct that they shared. Mr. Strontium’s earthy, intuitive percussion lays the groundwork. Meg’s unbiased vocal is more than ever refreshing on this release, stormy guitar and electric ukulele work taps into the mystery zoned for Twilight. With vision and artistic instinct unlike Miles Davis’, The Margaret Hooligans is meant to take the world through their unapologetic bend of reality and sonics.
Check out our interview below where we talk about how “Hey Love” comes together. The Margaret Hooligans also tease their upcoming album, so stay tuned!
Punk Head: I love how hypnotic and atmospheric “Hey Love" is. Where do you find your inspirations?
The Margaret Hooligans: We usually start out with rhythm - a good beat or riff and build from there. In this case, “Hey Love” was built from that initial drum beat that drives the song, and I was experimenting with different settings on my Fender Mustang amp and found this setting I liked, called Spoonful—it had a nice big room feel to it, something I love about old Phil Spector and Motown recordings, and that kinda drove the whole song. I think the fact that it sounded spacey and ethereal ultimately influenced the lyrics, because it felt a bit like I was calling into the void as I initially sang the words “hey love” in the original jam.
I was thinking of one of the early scenes in the movie, Contact, how they demonstrate how radio waves travel into space, seemingly going on forever. That idea always seemed weird to me, like a message in a bottle, except in this case, it’s a missive to space and whatever life might exist out there. It felt lonely and sad, which gave me the idea to sing about the slow death of a relationship, using the analogy of an astronaut going into space to talk about the growing distance between two lovers.
PH: What do you like the best about this track?
The Margaret Hooligans: I love the soundscape in particular, it sets itself apart from our other songs because I used some pedals that I don’t typically use. I also recorded it with an electric ukulele that I don’t play as often because the tremolo bar knocks it out of tune when I get too exuberant, but this ukulele has it’s own unique sound, possibly because it is made from a koa tone wood, and I think that is part of the reason why I like it. There is also a solo at the end of the song that I think is one of my best. I am more of a rhythm player, but since we are a two-piece, I have to come up with leads as well and that doesn’t come as naturally to me, so I am really proud of this particular solo—it’s not scale based, it’s not riffing off the existing vocal melody, it’s telling its own story and fits in perfectly with the imagery of blasting off into oblivion.
PH: Can you tell us a little about your upcoming album?
The Margaret Hooligans: Saturday Night at Bartertown is our third album and marks the end of a huge batch of music we recorded during the Covid lockdowns. We made so much music during that period that it has taken us about 2 1/2 years to release it all. It’s a little different from the other two albums in that there’s a little less of our typical tongue-in-cheek attitude, although there’s still a bit of that. We have some more serious fare on it, with ‘Hey Love,’ a bluesy song called ‘I Won’t Speed Up, You Won’t Slow Down,’ and ‘Say What You Want (Trousers of the Holy).’ But then we also have lighter hearted songs like ‘Doggie Pizza Crust’ which came out last month, “My Dog Ringo,” and “What Kind of Donut Are You?,” the last of which was written out of my frustration at being gluten-free and unable to find any decent gluten-free donuts. (Side note: since we recorded the song I have found an amazing gluten-free donut shop in my city called Okie Dokie Donuts.) We also are including a cover of the Grateful Dead’s “New Speedway Boogie,” which is a first for us. All of our previous releases have only been original work.
PH: What motivates you as an artist?
The Margaret Hooligans: I think we ultimately are reacting to everything that happens in the world around us, both global events as well as personal ones. Generally, I like to laugh at things that scare me, which is why we have a lot of humor in our work, but there’s a lot of anger beneath it all too, which I think comes through in the vocals and the energetic drive that Strontium always provides through his drumming.
PH: What is the one thing that you’d like your fans to know about you?
The Margaret Hooligans: As Bruce Dickinson says from the legendary SNL More Cowbell sketch, “I put my pants on, just like the rest of ya, one leg at a time, but once my pants are on, I make gold records.” And you can never have enough cowbell.
