Hum - Electra 2000

Year: 1997

Label: Martian Go Home

Huge, epic, massive, thick, gigantic, expansive...uh what else is really big? Titanic? Sure.

This second release out of Champaign, Illinois band Hum's catalog galvanized the sound that would propel them into Cadillac advertisements over a decade later. It was originally released in 1993 on 12 Inch Records, with a slightly different running order, and was then re-released in 1997 on Martian Go Home, which is what you have here. 

The guitars are blankets of sound, warm and enveloping, while the rhythms ebb and flow. The vocals are layered on in a smooth sheen, never competing with the forward progression of each song. If you took the emotional dynamics of Sunny Day Real Estate, and filtered it through the blissed out bombast of old Smashing Pumpkins, this would be the result. You've probably heard this band, so I'll leave it at that. If per chance you never caught them the first time around, do yourself a favor and get this. I haven't heard a band play like this since.

After Hum, the members went on to form a grip of bands in the Champaign-Urbana scene cannibalizing other local bands like Castor, 16 Tons, and Love Cup in the process of concocting; Centaur, Open Hand, National Skyline, Gazelle, Glifted, Balisong, and more one-off projects. Point being, if you like Hum, you can peep these other bands to hear the different elements of that band dissected and magnified. If anyone is interested, I have Glifted, and National Skyline stuff I could post.

DL