After 17 tracks, Hovvdy is ready to reveal its thesis statement: “We’ll do a whole lot of talking/Don’t a lot have to happen,” Martin sings on the aching “Angel.” In moments like these, Hovvdy’s primary artistic analog might not be other musicians so much as Richard Linklater—another Lone Star sentimentalist who lets his work unfold at life’s pace, cobbling together a series of scenes and characters that vaguely resemble a plot. Linklater’s films are often considered comedies, though from an older, more cynical perspective, they might actually be psychological horror films with the prospect of adulthood looming offscreen like an invisible, airborne monster. The video for Hovvdy’s finest song, 2019’s “Ruin (my ride),” was their “party at the moon tower” minus the buzzkill brawl, with Martin, Taylor, and their friends doing an increasingly drunken Texas two-step late into the summer night, living out the happy future that no one in Dazed and Confused or Everybody Wants Some!! got to see for themselves.Yet the five years since has rendered “Ruin (my ride)” a bittersweet memory as well. Hovvdy are no longer the inseparable buds implied by the album cover—Martin lives in St. Louis, and Taylor in Nashville. Though Hovvdy toggles back and forth between lead vocals, the perspective is fairly consistent, earnest optimism spiked with just enough conflict to make it all feel earned. Taylor and Martin’s vocals top out at a frustrated exhale, yet they know how to bite down on expressions of absence—“I swore you left town, maaan” or “My bad I ghosted again.” Martin rues the limitations of his brotherly love on “Bubba,” and when he repeats “God I hate it,” it has the jarring impact of a black metal howl.In talking about Hovvdy to another longtime fan, I speculated that you could make a drinking game out of every time they say “love” or “light,” or the name of a family member, or a local landmark, or a Southern interstate. It was meant as a joke, but that’s kind of the point of Hovvdy; taking the time to truly savor the warm glow of a friendship maintained over time and space, service to the suffering rendered gladly, or just a day where you took the long way home just because that’s what your teenage self might’ve admired. It’s almost too easy to quote the climactic line from Linklater’s coming-of-age opus Boyhood: “The moment is constant, the moment seizes us.” But Martin and Taylor don’t think in opuses, in grand gestures and proclamations, in magic or illusion. Hovvdy simply slows down time just long enough to capture the beauty in the moments that always threaten to float away if they’re not captured immediately and cherished.All products featured on Pitchfork are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
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