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First Play: Hollerado, Born Yesterday

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By
Andrea Gin

The title track from Hollerado’s new album, Born Yesterday, almost never made it onto the recording. The Toronto-based quartet's members thought they had finished writing all the songs for this new album when guitarist Nixon Boyd told his bandmates he had come up with yet another riff.

“We’d been having the best time writing this record,” recalls lead vocalist/guitarist Menno Versteeg in an interview with CBC Radio 3. “We’d basically done a whole record, recorded it and decided to keep writing because we were having so much fun. We were literally sitting there in the jam space and Nick [Nixon Boyd] was like, ‘I got this one more riff I want to show you guys.’ Every single person in the band turned around at the same time and said, ‘No! No more jams, no more riffs.'”

Boyd, convinced he had something good, kept insisting. The band finally relented, and the riff became the basis for the album’s lead single.

“Sure enough, that riff was so pumpin’, and so rockin’ and...just captured the feeling we’d been having writing these songs over the previous six months," said Versteeg.

"It’s a love song, but it’s also a song about our relationship with our band and our music, and how we really felt like we were a bunch of 16-year-olds doing this for the first time,” he added.

Boyd is also responsible for another standout track on the album: “Don’t Shake,” a catchy, anthemic, moving song he wrote after being diagnosed with testicular cancer. In it, he's asking people in his life to stay strong.

Born Yesterday contains many highlights, from pop gems like “Eloise” to rock jams like “Sorry You’re Alright” to the slow-burning closer “If It Is Love.” It’s the band's first album since 2015’s massive 111 Songs collection, and it shows Hollerado at its most exuberant and versatile.

Born Yesterday will be released on April 14 via Royal Mountain Records. Pre-order it here. Hollerado will be touring extensively across Canada in May and June. Check dates here.

Editor's note: tracks “Grief Money” and “Eloise” contain profanity.