Notable Debut: Hospitality - Hospitality

Bursting onto the seemingly underground scene the last couple of weeks is the Brooklyn based trio Hospitality with their self-titled debut album. I honestly don't know if I have seen a band get more run on the twitterverse the last few weeks besides Hospitality. Obviously, I'm discounting Lana Del Rey with that last statement because at this point and with this conversation she shouldn't count. It hasn't just been bloggers and music publications either, other bands and artists have been all over plugging them and mostly unbeknownst to the band. Even Colin Meloy, lead sing of The Decemberists, tweeted this last week, "Coming out of twitter lock-down to say: Hospitality is, like, my new favorite band." That tweet also included their fantastic video for the current single "Friends of Friends." On January 31st, the day the album was released, he tweeted again, "@hospitalityband has a record out today and it's super good." Not bad for a band to get that kind of unsolicited publicity from an indie music God like Meloy right out of the gate.

My 1st taste of Hospitality was when the aforementioned video for "Friends of Friends" dropped and was mentioned that Alia Skawkat, who played the characted Maybe in Arrested Development, was in it. I love all things AR and especially now that the show is making a comeback and answering all of our prayers so of course I was going to check it out. Between the opening guitar-riff-buildup to my introduction to singer Amber Papini talking about not wanting to go down to the streets of New York and friends that are old and new friends, I was instantly taken in by the catchiness of this song.

Considering this trio has been together since 2007 and this being their 1st full-length album it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that there is such cohesiveness, clarity, and smootheness to their sound. You can tell they have been playing together a while and didn't just get lucky after only playing for a few months, which seems to be the trend. It's nice and refreshing and I hope for much more to come from Hospitality and to see them live soon!

To be honest, I was going to wait a little bit before reviewing this because there has been so much hoopla but I haven't been able to stop listening to it, even with such a strong week for new music!

Check the video for "Friends of Friends" below. It's crazy how much Maybe looks the same...