New Release: “The Other Side”

At a time when the trend for songwriters is to release singles, EPs and one-off tracks, Minneapolis-based musician Terry Hughes has crafted an actual album. Remember those? Long-playing adventures that careful listeners would take with one artist in the form of two sides, several songs and spirits? That’s what Hughes’ third album achieves over the course of 13 songs, and then some.

“This is the record I always wanted to write,” said Hughes, of the four-years-in-the-making The Other Side. “This is sort of the culmination of learning how to sing, and how to play rock music again. I’d been playing jazz for thirty-five years. This has been a learning experience for me. My first couple records, I kept writing the same song over and over again. That’s changed, a lot. I stopped worrying about what people think and now I can write a lot freer. It just comes a lot easier to me now.”

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Backed by Marco Kielholz (guitar/vocals); Erik Fratzke (bass/vocals); Josue Hurtado (drums and percussion), and Owen Davis (cello/vocals), and engineered by Joe Johnson, The Other Sideis Hughes’s third release in five years, after In The Blink Of An Eye(2014) and More Than Black and White(2013).

“All of these songs are basically vehicles for vocals,” said Hughes. “It’s very layered big-time vocals. Some of these things have 40 vocal parts on them. I tried to channel Brian Wilson as much as possible. He’s the guy who kind of inspired me to want to really work with vocals, because I don’t hear anybody doing it, and the reason you don’t hear anyone doing it is because it’s hard, right? What I’ve learned is, back then, if you were in the Beach Boys, you were a singer. But I’ve got good guys, and we can actually pull it off with multiple vocals. They love the music and they bring a lot to it.”

Terry Hughes

Since his first two records, and since his days leading Bay Area-punk bands, Hughes admits that he now, for the first time, has something to say as a songwriter. In that sense, The Other Side is a refreshing and uneasy slice of the times, coming from a writer who has obviously been paying attention—and reacting—to the tumultuous here and now. “D.E.A.” is a Joe Jackson- or Elvis Costello-worthy tale of paranoid dreaming that, given the state of our elected officials and intelligence community, could be the lament of any would-be criminal in the U.S.A. The eerie ballad “Dangerous Man” is similarly steeped in real life headlines, as is the Queen-meets-Trip Shakespeare operatic slow-burner “Lost Amid The Promises.” “Viewer Discretion Advised” warns of the evils of the omnipresent advertising matrix and the overstimulation of our screen society that could be a lite pop soundtrack to Black Mirror. Similarly, “The End Of Wonder” is a funky-n-trippy rumination on the effect of technology on the soul, and “An Invisible Man” details the very modern plight of navigating communication, the ego, and technology.

“When I started to write songs eight years ago, I was writing about things that happened to me 25 years ago in San Francisco—drugs and this crazy life—and all this rich stuff that I could draw on to write about,” said Hughes, a husband, father, and business owner. “So I learned the craft over the last five, six years, and now when something happens that’s significant or meaningful to me in my life, now I have the tools to write that song. There’s great stuff happening in my life right now. We just got a dog, Lily, and I’ve got a song in my head about Lily and I just need to get it down on paper.”In addition to topical tunes and sharply crafted pop-rockers, The Other Sidefeatures Hughes’ personal storytelling, including the beautifully sung and real-world romantic ballad “Bottom Line,” the Jayhawks-worthy lament “I’ve Never Been So Alone,” the lived-in heartstrings-puller “You Can’t Save Me,” which cuts through with Hughes’ willowy vocals and real emotion, and vocal-centered tunes like the righteous ode to Hughes’ nephew “Danny,” and the beautiful call-to-stay-in-the-moment ballad “Bless These Grateful Tears,” inspired by—what else?—a trip to the dog park.

“I went to the dog park, and I was just not in serenity,” said Hughes. “Lots of stuff going on, and I was just walking around the dog park and I just had this moment where everything stopped. My mind cleared up and I felt peace, literally. I felt a peace. And shortly after that, I felt hope. And at that moment, the wind came up and it blew through these trucks that are parked at the top of this hill, and you could hear all these quarter tones, like this really odd sound and color that you normally don’t hear in music, and because I was in songwriting mode, I was able to catch that experience and write a song.”

The Other Sidelands in record stores and on streaming services all over the world in August. It’s the sound of hope amidst troubled times, and makes its bow at an autumn CD release party at Studio 2 Café in South Minneapolis, where the Terry Hughes Band currently throws down at its monthly residency.

“I really love this material,” said Hughes, who plays keyboards exclusively on the new record. “I would say this is the best work I’ve ever done. It’s important for me to just put it on record. It’s not important for me to sell a lot of records or to be a big star. I don’t care about that. I’m doing this so that I know, ‘Here’s what I did. I have this. And I stand behind this.’ Also, when I move back to California, or when I move on to somewhere else, it goes with me. I wrote these songs. I can play them all just me and my guitar.”

The Other Side Track list