Hawaiian Bibles

Big NAThan...reviews HWB for The Skinny Mag!


Hawaiian Bibles serve magic wafers and wine to the masses.
Current mood: accomplished

I recently had the big pleasure of reviewing a CD by a local band called Hawaiian Bibles. I liked it. Very much so. Here's what i said about it.


Hawaiian Bibles - There's Good People In The City

Who says you can't make big ass kicking rock tunes with only a bass and a set of drums? Vancouver's own Hawaiian Bibles have done just this with the release of their first full length titled "There's Good People In The City", and what a religious experience it has been getting acquainted with the varied twists and turns that this scrappy little outfit can pull off with little to work with. The CD kicks off with it's title track, immediately setting the tone for a near 40 minutes of fuzzed out late 60's to 90's freak rock psychedelia. I swear i peed myself a little on first listen to "Don't Wanna Give It Up", a thrashing little fucker that i can't WAIT to experience live.
With it's raw production quality and a sound that leaves plenty of room for growth, Devon Boquist (bass/vocals) and Jordan Gervais (drums/vocals) have made an album worth taking the time to enjoy. It's rough, it's dirty, and it sounds like it may have been recorded in my basement in exchange for food, but it rocks and rolls, shifts and surprises. Perfect for anytime, Hawaiian Bibles have proven that indeed, there are good people (making good music) in the city.

- THe Skinny Music Magazine

NUMBER 33 On EARSHOT’s Top 50!

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For the Week Ending: Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Other charts: Top 50 Electronic Hip Hop International Jazz Loud Folk/Roots/Blues
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1 1 The Constantines Kensington Heights Arts & Crafts
2 4 The Black Keys Attack & Release Nonesuch
3 6 Tokyo Police Club Elephant Shell Saddle Creek
4 21 The Ramblin' Ambassadors Vista Cruiser Country Squire Mint
5 3 Islands Arm's Way Anti
6 7 Teenage Head With Marky Ramone Teenage Head With Marky Ramone Sonic Unyon
7 32 Portishead Third Island
8 10 No Age Nouns Sub Pop
9 39 The Wet Secrets Rock Fantasy Rodeo Peanut
10 2 Crystal Castles Crystal Castles Last Gang
11 8 M83 Saturdays=Youth Mute
12 5 Flight Of The Conchords Flight Of The Conchords Sub Pop
13 20 Woodhands Heart Attack Paper Bag
14 15 Young And Sexy Arc Mint
15 16 Los Campesinos! Hold On Now, Youngster Arts & Crafts
16 26 Boris Smile Southern Lord
17 12 Duchess Says Anthologies Des 3 Perchoirs Alien8
18 14 Destroyer Trouble In Dreams Merge
19 13 Hilotrons Happymatic Kelp
20 18 Black Mountain In The Future JagJaguwar/Scratch
21 36 Man Man Rabbit Habits Anti
22 33 Simply Saucer Half Human, Half Live Sonic Unyon
23 -- Indian Jewelry "Free Gold!" We Are Free
24 23 Frightened Rabbit The Midnight Organ Fight Fat Cat
25 11 Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! Anti-
26 -- Creature No Sleep At All Bonsound
27 9 Plants And Animals Parc Avenue Secret City
28 24 Various Do You Want To Talk All Night? A Tribute To Snailhouse Sappy
29 -- Mudhoney The Lucky Ones Sub Pop
30 34 The Pack A.D. Tintype Mint
31 -- The Greenbelt Collective Our Homes Independent
32 -- Old Man Luedecke Proof Of Love Black Hen Music
33 -- Hawaiian Bibles There's Good People In The City Independent
34 41 Sarah Slean The Baroness WEA
35 -- Supergrass Diamond Hoo Ha Parlophone
36 30 Billy Bragg Mr. Love & Justice Anti-
37 49 CPC Gangbangs Mutilation Nation Swami
38 -- The Raveonettes Lust Lust Lust Vice
39 -- Gnarls Barkley The Odd Couple Downtown/Atlantic
40 22 Urban Surf Kings Bang Howdy Partner Independent
41 17 Clinic Do It! Domino
42 -- Pattern Is Movement All Together Hometapes
43 27 Eric Chenaux Sloppy Ground Constellation
44 19 Animal Collective Water Curses Domino
45 -- Shearing Pinx Haruspex Divorce
46 -- Vancougar Obvious Mint
47 -- Horses Horses Out Of Touch
48 44 Culture Reject Culture Reject White Whale
49 -- Foals Antidotes Sub Pop
50 48 R.E.M. Accelerate Warner

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22 May 2008

Georgia Straight interview May 22nd by Shawn Conner

Local Motion

Those zany cutups in the Hawaiian Bibles never fail to crack each other up with their wacky back-yard antics.
May 22, 2008
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Hawaiian Bibles stay unabashedly earnest
By Shawn Conner

Don't mistake the sentiment behind "There's Good People in the City", the title track of Hawaiian Bibles' debut, for irony or sarcasm. The drum-and-bass rock duo means just what the title implies.

"It really is about that," says Devin Boquist over coffee at Prado on Commercial Drive. The singer-bassist holds up the disc and points to the cover image, which is a cartoonish portrait of a trio that looks like a bad superhero team: a raven-haired vixen, a King Kong–ish gorilla, and a pimped-out dude. "These are shady-looking characters, right?" he notes. But that doesn't mean they aren't good people, Boquist adds. Well, except maybe for the ape. "We're saying, 'Don't judge a book by its cover,' " he explains.

Speaking of which: because of their name and a brief glimpse of a live video of them on YouTube, I'd been expecting a pair of hipsters. Yet Boquist and drummer Jordan Gervais are anything but. For instance, neither of them live on or near Main Street (they hang in Richmond and Coquitlam respectively), and their songs, while hewing pretty closely to an indie-rock framework, are unfashionably sincere.

Take the album-ending "She Stays for the Kids", a departure in that it's a guitar-and-voice song. As full of pathos as the title implies, the tune is one of the disc's most hard-hitting. "I pretty much wrote the entire song in one evening and recorded it at home," says Boquist. "It's not super-literal, but it definitely depicted a time in my life with my wife, and the bit of a yin-yang kind of thing we have going on that works really well."

While the duo tinkered with some songs endlessly—they estimate they've recorded up to five versions of the title track, a careening, crashing pileup of drum, bass, and synth—they left others, like "She Stays for the Kids", relatively untouched.

"Just before we were going to release it [the CD] my girlfriend said, 'Oh, he [Boquist] is kind of flat in some spots, and he does this and that,' " Gervais recounts. "And I said, 'You don't understand.…This is a guy at 2 o'clock in the morning, he's down in the dumps, his wife is fast asleep and they've just had a scrap, and so it's his heart and soul. Why would you want to redo that?' "

The two Hawaiian Bibles met a couple of years ago, when Boquist answered an ad placed in the Georgia Straight by the band Gervais was in at the time. When, after a few months of basement practice, the other members asked the drummer to give the newbie his walking papers, Gervais left as well. Building a sound around Boquist's propulsive, melodic bass lines and Gervais's adaptable drumming, they played their first gig in January of last year. There's Good People in the City, recorded in bits and pieces, was released this past March. Gervais estimates they actually had between 20 and 30 songs, but then edited the best bits down to the debut's 11 tracks.

"We'd play a song and think it was done," he says, "and then we'd say, 'That sweet little part there—the rest of the song is sort of crappy—let's use that as a transition.' "

This meant there was little room for egos to get in the way. "We've had other players come in, and now we're set on just being the two of us," says Boquist. "We'd like to create the bigger sound live, but it's so easy for us to work together. Having one more person involved makes everything so much more complicated. It's so easy for us to communicate: we can say, 'That sucks, that totally sucks.' And we'll just laugh about how badly that sucks."

"There's been a lot of 'that sucks' and finger-pointing," Gervais agrees. "I'll say, 'We can't sing another song about the girl in the corner, man.' "

Boquist adds with a laugh: "Anytime I do anything off the cuff, it's always got to do with a party or girls or drugs or something like that. It's just such natural stuff for me to pull out of the hat."

But even that's better than what Gervais sees as some local bands' penchant for more metaphysical, metaphorical lyrics.

"They've got great images, and they're great writers, and I can appreciate that," he says. "But we don't necessarily know about, you know, 'The hobbit floated down the strawberry-milk-tree lane' type stuff. We don't write about that." Not when there are good people in the city to write about.

Hawaiian Bibles play the ANZA Club on Saturday (May 24).

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- By Shawn Conner