Haysop Haysop

I first heard what would become Haysop’s eponymous debut album while being driven around Highland Park by Jameson Hubbard. The demos of his bandmates and him playing in his Centreville home, recorded on his phone that he’d set down somewhere in his living room, were tinny but irresistible. Now they’ve been fleshed out by nearly two years of shows in Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee, but this album’s roots go back much further.
Haysop is not Hubbard’s first rodeo. He’s worked his way from the Northridge High School tuba line to the Alabama Blues Project, hiring out his harmonica chops to Boomer blues bands and doing time as an open mic host. He’s played coffee house shows and farmer’s markets for hours at a time. His first band, SQQUAT, remains a beloved act whenever he gets them back on a stage.
None of this has gone to waste. The songs on this record came together in the background of his time with SQQUAT, a heavy, early-metal-influenced group whose syrupy riffs drip into some of Haysop’s sound. SQQUAT introduced Hubbard to the Tuscaloosa and Birmingham circuit as a songwriter and bandleader and accrued a guaranteed local crowd for his performances. But the new songs he was writing required something different.
Hubbard put together the first iteration of Haysop in the fall of 2023 to rehearse the collection of songs that would become their debut album. Along with Dan Walker on bass, Joseph Edwards on drums, and SQQUAT veteran Brantley Platt on lead guitar, Hubbard cut Haysop’s first record with an ensemble of local talent. Recorded at Taylor Hollingsworth’s home studio in Birmingham, the album also features singer-songwriter Janet Simpson and pedal steel guitarist Conor Rector rounding out the songs.
These songs distill the sensations of the late, blurry nights and lounging mornings of a budding relationship, as well as the peculiar solitude it can bring–the exhilaration and speed of those early weeks, the push and pull of bringing someone into your life, the whiplash of an argument or a misunderstanding. Together, they offer up an emotional portrait that is at once personal and familiar. 
        Hubbard’s lyricism calls up the wry voice of Kurt Vile and early cheeky Dylan, sometimes addressing a lover and sometimes himself, with a sharpness that cuts both ways. “You never knew me, babe–you never knew what’s going on,” he sings on the opening track. “I’m leaving high, just waiting around for you to fall apart.” Is it vindictive, or is it anxious? It’ll mean something different on the drive home alone than it did on the way to the party.
        And this album will be as easygoing on your house party turntable as it will be on your driving playlist, because it just sounds damn good.
A charismatic performer, especially next to Walker and Edwards effortlessly holding down the groove, Hubbard has made Haysop into a can't-miss live performance with a danceable swing you suddenly realize you’ve been wishing for. It can be hard to bottle up all that bounce on a studio album, but they’ve done it on the first try and taken full advantage of all the craftsmanship a studio offers.
        The well-loved sounds of Muscle Shoals and Memphis are refreshed in Hollingsworth’s studio, whose characteristic sparkle rings through the album. Platt and Rector tip their hats to classic Nashville lead guitar and pedal steel over Hubbard’s Wurlitzer whorl and reverberating harmonica. The classics are comforting but never derivative: tried and true sounds are used to serve the songs, not attempt a genre revival.
        Catchy as the songs may be, Hubbard steers clear of the blasé by embracing the contradictory, letting the tracks converse across the album. On “Cut Me Open,” he sardonically offers, “Why don’t you cut me open? I ain’t got much,” but seems to relent over the song’s heavy crescendo: “I won’t hold it up against your worried mind.” But on “Keep Your Arms Around Me," over a beachy melody floating on Simpson’s perfectly poppy background vocals, he comes back to reassure: “All I ever wanna know, is what you got going on. All I ever wanna say is, are you coming my way?” Hubbard earnestly toes the line of owning those harsh things we say  without conceding his voice to cynicism.
        Although Haysop was formed as a vehicle for Hubbard’s songwriting, the album never feels like a showcase. It’s a rock ‘n’ roll album through and through–no fillers, no snoozers, because Hubbard knows when to rein it in and when to let it rip. Road-tested as a well-paced set, the tracklist runs the gamut of full-throttle rocking to loose and laid-back front porch picking.
Reflective tracks like “I Keep Wasting My Time” and “Only Distraction” are well-earned punctuations to the breakneck speeds of “Give All That You Can” and “If You Wake Up Early.” And while the latter two may get you out of your seat at the show, it’s the endearing openness of the slower tracks that establish the album as more than the sum of its parts. “Tell me when you’ve had enough of me,” Hubbard sings on “Only Distraction.” But you’ll be ready to spin it again.