Single Review: Stay Away

Hailing from the Garden City and just a short 15-minute drive from yours truly, the 4-piece band known as The Hootz are releasing their upcoming single Stay Away.

This song has a very melancholy vibe to it, but not in the sense of it being a negative thing, if anything it has a very Summer vibe feel to it. No wonder the tag of surf rock accompanies this band, you can certainly feel the ‘Sumner’ vibes all the way through this song. Sumner has been renowned as the creative soul of Christchurch. This song has heart and soul in the truck load and just seems to keep on giving as it rolls on for four minutes. I like the fact the song makes subtle changes to keep the listening ear perked up, especially around the latter end of the song, it takes on a new life of its own.

I cannot feel a little ripped off at the end though. The song goes through a transition to some heavy six string strumming that inevitably means your head will naturally start doing that forward and back head bobbing that young people call a sign of a good song. All of a sudden the song just stops; I was almost awaiting the next stage of the song to go into overdrive to allow some moon stomping. Maybe this was the point of the song, maybe I was taken on that ride wanting more?

This song has great production value, the instruments are clear and precise as well as the lyrics. It is a well put together song which crosses numerous genres and will no doubt have many different admirers going forwards. Four very smart and talented chaps that deserve four minutes of your time to take a listen and not be disappointed. This definitely scores a strong 7 out of 10 for me, it would definitely have been an 8 if I was able to get an extra 30 seconds for some moon stomping.