HUSHMONEY — “Same Thing (For Mojo)” [Video]

Los Angeles band HUSHMONEY announces their debut, eponymous album due June 28th via Sunday Drive Records. Alongside the announcement of HUSHMONEY, the group shares their new single “Same Thing (For Mojo)” featuring Sierra Kay (Neaux, VersaEmerge), which arrives with a playful video full of dogs, rocking out in the park, and off-kilter visuals directed by 12-year-old Max Weidenfeld. HUSHMONEY will include the previously released singles “Bad Guy (Until He Died)” and “Bad For You,” which arrived with a Romo-directed video.

The video for “Same Thing (For Mojo)” came together after vocalist Phil Matarese was approached by a young cinephile Max, son of Phil’s close friend Nick Weidenfeld. When Max heard the HUSHMONEY track “Same Thing (For Mojo),” the 12-year-old sent the band a video treatment out of the blue that felt like the perfect fit. Speaking about working with Max, Phil elaborates:

“Shooting a music video with a twelve-year-old director was so goddamn fun. It allowed us all to play. He got a bunch of late-thirties married rockers to put on dog costumes and face paint and run around an active dog park. But we did it for Max. Our cameramen did it for Max. Our production assistants did it for Max. Our producers (Max’s parents and cousin Rachel) did it for Max. This is a band of friends and it was a day of friends coming together. It was the best Sunday everyone’s had in a long time, and the video shows that.”

Across their debut full length album, HUSHMONEY paint the ridiculousness of existence so very right. Mixed and mastered by Grammy-nominated producer Will Yip (Code Orange, Turnstile, Mannequin Pussy, Title Fight, etc.) HUSHMONEY is a deft concept album about the faulty choices that bitter men nearing middle age can make, backed with the chances they have to redeem themselves if they know where to look. We’re all trying to figure out how to survive and make meaning—and to have a little fun in the process, too. If the band itself has been an escape hatch from mid-30s anxieties and disappointments for its members, its work here shows how much fun you can have and good you can do when you start to turn that stuff on its head, to turn it all into a shout-out-loud rock song.

The announcement of HUSHMONEY follows up a string of successful and powerful shows at SXSW where the band performed at the Flatspot and Sunday Drive Records unofficial showcase alongside the likes of Buggin, End It, Scowl and more. The debut full length also follows HUSHMONEY’s EP Success Pool, which introduced their hardcore, 90s rock, and alt-country influenced sonics paired with cheeky and lyric-driven storytelling. The five piece band pairs Chris Gaylor of All-American Rejects and Phil Matarese, the creator and voice of HBO’s wonderfully playful Animals, with three longtime friends. Matarese, guitarist Michael Iannatto, and bassist Brian Barbaruolo began playing together in assorted outfits as young teenagers in rural New Jersey, forced to find social cachet outside of sports since their hometown football team won almost zero games during their entire adolescence. After they all found themselves in Los Angeles in their mid-thirties, they started another band, recruiting Gaylor and guitarist Matt Martin.

HUSHMONEY became a way to blow off steam and hang out with old pals in a low-rent practice space downtown. They could vent about worst-case scenarios, play and sing until it all felt a little more tolerable. The rock ’n’ roll sound of the band pairs with an unabashed and unironic embrace of the alternative-rock that these five dudes now somewhere in their 30s totally loved as circa-millennia teens.

You can order the album HERE.