Pastoral folk pop group Hem isn’t shy about conclusions. Departure & Farewell, their latest effort and first in four years, reinforces that with vivid intensity. Thankfully, though, the pattern doesn’t project onto the band itself despite a recent threat.
When pills took a stranglehold on Hem’s chief songwriter/pianist/accordion and glockenspiel player, Dan Messe, the band went on indefinite hiatus. During his addiction and early leg of recovery, Hem launched camp at a dusty fork in the road. Camping alongside them was a large bundle of mostly and completely finished, beautiful alt-country songs. “I think everyone was extremely sore that we had all this material sitting there already recorded and never gonna get finished,” guitarist/mandolin player Gary Maurer tells Paste during a recent phone interview. “It seemed like such a—well, shame doesn’t seem like quite the right word but a shame.”
The Brooklyn band sat in a limbo that lasted years. After some time marinating in deep uncertainty, Messe decided to reclaim his life and the life of his beloved band. Now, Messe and Maurer agree, Hem is reinforced with a new, steel-plated inter-band empathy and strength.
“Basically the rebirth came when I was finally able to ask for help to get clean,” Messe explains. “And once that happened, the healing really started—[it was] the end of the hole. I realize how precious the gift was. We had this band we felt we had sort of recommitted ourselves to making music together.”
Maurer guessed by the time of Hem’s second round in the ring, they had close to 25 songs in the proverbial bank from before. These tracks included the stirring and soft bar-stool blues track “Last Call.” Fortified from the tough stuff before, the band later went to work crafting some of their eventual favorites from the album. The sashaying “Walking Past The Graveyard Not Breathing,” gorgeous album closer “So Long” and Brooklyn-boosting slow-burner “Tourniquet” came after Messe’s recovery.
That latter song, “Tourniquet,” best shows how Messe’s adopted hometown grew jagged fangs during his addiction—a theme running through the record. It name-drops dozens of Brooklyn neighborhoods, personifying each in a slightly violent way (“Brooklyn, I’m broken / I’m breaking apart / Greenpoint pins down my hand / Red Hook pierces my heart / My blood runs into the Gowanus Canal / Where it sinks to the bottom / And it hurts like hell”). The conflict Messe felt is tangible.
“All of a sudden [Brooklyn] just felt injured,” Messe says. “It did feel like it was pointy and sharp. There were sharp edges everywhere. It’s one of those things when you reach that point when you’re so desperate to get help. And the world feels very alone and you’re feeling vulnerable.”
But that time ended. Departure already has two videos circulating for “Tourniquet” and “Seven Angels.” The band plans to bring their highly emotive cherub-folk live all along the East Coast and some of the Midwest this spring. Hem might sing a lot about stopping in general, but they themselves ain’t slowing down.
“I don’t see anyone that wants to walk away,” Maurer gushes. “It’s meaningful in ways that are probably not immediately evident to the fans. We had our first New York City show at the Bell House three weeks ago—it was the first time we played in New York since November 2007. It’s not like we played a great show, but the crowd made it a great show. They were so into it… And when something is moving to someone other than yourself you feel like you’re part of this larger thing [with which] it’s harder to walk away. I’m not comfortable thinking we’re not gonna do this anymore.”
Messe jumps right in—I can only imagine—fervently nodding his head in his Carroll Gardens home. “The fact that we found each other at all, was a miracle,” he earnestly adds. “The idea that I would walk away from that ever shows how crazy I was at my lowest. Now I wake up every day, say a prayer thanking the universe for this opportunity.”
Amen to that.