The Hugs!!

"The Hugs are the underage anglophile indie-poppers from Portland, Oregon. With experience closer to the cradle then the grave, expect sugary ballads advising on the tying of laces and love songs minus the bile with shamelessly Libertines-esque "woah ohs" "With their swooshing swathes of rainbow rock, The Hugs are further proof that someone’s certainly putting something in the water in Portland, Oregon. Like The Lemonheads but with more primal yelping Read more on Last.fm …read full bio

"The Hugs are the underage anglophile indie-poppers from Portland, Oregon. With experience closer to the cradle then the grave, expect sugary ballads advising on the tying of laces and love songs minus the bile with shamelessly Libertines-esque "woah ohs" "With their swooshing swathes of rainbow rock, The Hugs are further proof that someone’s certainly putting something in the water in Portland, Oregon. Like The Lemonheads but with more primal yelping, the moment when their retro-referencing tunes seem to be veering too much in a pleasant, palatable garage-punk direction, their teeny weeny frontman Danny Delegato – the lovechild of Noel Fielding and one of The Monkees – lets go a grave-spinning, throat-slashing screech before indulging in some energetic and muscle-tearing mic-robatics." -NME "The Hugs are a four-piece rock ’n’ roll band from Portland, Oregon, who recorded their debut album in England. This makes sense because their music sounds British—not “Greensleeves” British, but rather the brand of British that became popular when groups like The Kinks and The Yardbirds invaded America in the mid-’60s with their ramshackle lyrics and bluesy riffs. The Hugs’s music, though, is also very Oregonian, owing an equal debt to home-state forerunners like “Louie Louie” auteurs The Kingsmen and the late-’70s pre-grunge grunge outfit the Wipers. -Interview Magazine "You can put that NME cover on hold for now, as their rise to stardom will, at best, be a slow and gradual ascent. But under the floppy bangs and slouched teenage shoulders lies a group of kids on the cusp of something great. Much like the early forbearers of the jangly Brit-rock sound, the Hugs have a loose charm, a perfectly content sense of confidence that permeates throughout their sound, no matter how sloppy it might be at the time. Their music has the rough kinetic energy of Slanted and Enchanted-era Pavement, and the haphazard punk of (pre-crack and tabloids) the Libertines." "Local buzz band The Hugs are self-releasing their own debut album tonight (May 2007). The self-titled effort by these teenage Anglophiles shows a band wise beyond their years, and one keen on producing bouncy pop songs heavy on the hooks and melody." "The Hugs are the band that you wish you were in during high school. Or college. Or right now for that matter. Visceral and earnest, their songs are further along than their playing, and that's a good thing. Everything from the Velvet Underground to the Kinks to early Pavement is here, all being written by chaps young enough to yet worry about declaring a major. Unless, of course, it's declaring which major label they want to sign to." -Portland Mercury "While most musical careers progress in something of a straight line, the Hugs’ rise to prominence has developed like a Rorschach test committed to paper by a Parkinson’s victim during a sneezing fit." "Once they’ve been given the green light, the band hustles into the venue like a group of thirsty claim-jumpers, untangling cords and hollering impenetrable teen-speak. Each stylistically disparate member looks vaguely like daytime television’s idea of a rock-’n’-roll persona: the well-groomed twee kid, the smoking psychedelic kid, the Converse-clad “alternative” kid. Frontman Danny Delegato is the Guns N’ Roses-era caricature, his oversized sleeveless shirt and cowboy hat dwarfing his boyish frame. When asked to check his mic, he lets out a howl that dovetails into a squeal." "Drummer Kelly McKenzie absolutely kills—probably the most entertaining member of a very entertaining band—even if his thrashing can’t keep the rest of the band from wandering into the occasional rock-’n’-roll disaster. He tries repeatedly to end the band’s seemingly endless final song (which came complete with dangerous mic-stand-wielding and a Hendrix-style collapse or two) with little success." "Though members of the Hugs were just graduating high school when they formed in 2007, they still managed to expertly cultivate an experienced sound. Seemingly inspired in equal parts by the Kinks' The Village Green Preservation Society and more modern Detroit bands such as the Go, we are given a perfect contemporary interpretation of the '60s British pop sound. The Hugs were snatched up last year by an English producer for their self-titled album, so we should all do ourselves a favor and see this band before they're exported to Europe to make it big." -Willamette Weekly "The Hugs reminded me of a lot of things right off the bat. Danny Delegato (Vocals/Guitars) looked very similar to a young Ben Kweller with his floppy ears hat. In the sound department, The Hugs fall into the category of The View, and The Kooks. The difference is that The Hugs hail from Portland, Oregon instead of the United Kingdom. It was no surprise later that I find out that the band is heading off to England for a handful of shows in order to break out in the U.K. before coming back across the pond." Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.

…shrink me down again