Hanalei

Fearlessly seeking out substance, meaning and progression in creativity can be trying. Brian Moss, the twenty-six year old Chicago-via-Bay Area transplant, has been at it for a while. As a teen exposed to the heels of the region's punk prime and the sceney contradictions that often come as baggage to movements, Moss became fixated with independent music and culture at a young age. Following a typical stint of unmentionable high school garage bands, the singer/guitarist began releasing records and touring at the age of 19. With a slew of youthfully aggressive workings, including The Ghost, whose brash and brutally honest lyricism on post-whatever-pop-culture gathered a perfectly-small, yet devoted cult-like following, Moss toured the globe, sleeping and playing anywhere and everywhere incessantly for five or so years.

After The Ghost split, Moss, an avid listener of both the soothingly quiet and ear-splintering loud, began to play solo, in the direction of pop-formatted acoustics. Moss decided that a solo endeavor would give him the freedom to do as he pleased, musically, regardless of outside opinion. Shortly, he recorded his first solo album, We Are All Natural Disasters, under the moniker Hanalei. The album was released in 2003 on Chicago indie-staple, Thick Records. The record combined Moss's own well-rendered electronic rhythm and melody programming with jangly guitars, minimalist song structuring and captivating wax-poetics. Garnishing admiration, Moss somehow found time to balance a round of Stateside and European solo-based tours with his literature/creative writing studies and three jobs.

One year and a half later, Hanalei has returned, only this time, with a full band. During the past winter, Moss decided to temporarily abandon the laptop and add some close friends to the project. All veterans of the Chicago independent music community, Pete Tsoukas (Archaeology), Pete Croke (Rollo Tomasi), and Jason Kyrouac (Pines) are now permanent fixtures in the project, making the once solitary process a collaborative one. Hanalei's sophomore long player, Parts and Accessories, recorded in Chicago with friend and producer Chris Carr, is a moving work of independently based Americana that takes Moss''s intimately prolific lyricism to a new plateau. Through layered instrumentation including banjo, fiddle and pedal steel guitars, this contemporary roots rock progression is a remarkable leap forward. "Guaranteed, ten songs, some fast and some slow, and as always, lyrically the record will consist of non-fictional accounts, memoirs, critiques, petitions and observations from the life of yours truly" reports Moss. Guests on this album include Cellist Jenny Choi, The Velvet Teen/New Trust bassist/singer Josh Staples, Joe Cannon from Early Risers/Check Engine and Eddie Lo from Sleepout/May or May Not. For the preservationists of Hanalei's former "laptop folk" sound, fear not. A remix record is in the works.