Photo: Lauren McDermott
It’s well and truly ‘Operator Hour’ as York quartet Hello Operator make a welcome return to the capital. They’re headlining the first In The Tune club night at Nambucca – a venue that has rock ‘n’ roll running through it’s veins - with a line-up crafted to emerging talent perfection (Lucid, Hoodoo Daze and Sons also appear on the bill.)
The grit in singer Max Dalton’s vocal delivery mixed with the sultry tinges in their atmospheric guitar riffs is executed with immaculate precision, hypnotic in their performance it’s near impossible not to be entranced by them, and it’s exciting.
“Is that as good as it gets my honey?” the vocalist asks on the prowling ‘Hallucination Lucifer’ as all of the tracks from their Love Is A Loan EP get an airing this evening. We haven’t heard from the Yorkshire four piece for some time now and one can only assume they’ve been burrowed away making new music to follow it up, and a fresh cut does come in the form of ‘Oosh’. Widely teased on social media, the Holloway Road venue is treated to an early preview of the song which drops this Friday. Rocketing through the tune it doesn’t take long for the crowd to pick up the “oosh sha la la la” chorus as the quintessential, beautifully unruly Hello Operator sound pushes to the forefront of the track effortlessly.
It’s impressive that a band so early in their career have already honed such a distinct, all encompassing and sonically pleasing sound, bringing a performance that would work in arenas to a 300-cap haunt in North London. Surely it’s a sign of bigger things to come...
