PREMIERE: Hanford Reach – “Winston Smith”

Troubling times inspires great art to lose oneself in, and that holds true in the case of “Winston Smith,” the new single from Brooklyn-based neo-psych rockers Hanford Reach.

Based on the character from the now-timelier-than-ever 1984, the band consisting of Chris Sherman and Leah Cinnamon delivers a fiery, lush, expansive atmosphere. Sherman’s vocals soar above the intertwining instrumentals cutting through the chaos with a rallying cry. It’s a brilliant piece of psych regardless of the context and GroundSounds is happy to be premiering “Winston Smith” along with its accompanying video today.

“The world really feels like an Orwellian dystopia,” shares Sherman. “Where it doesn’t matter what the rational think; big brother is going to win out and shut us down. I hope that bleakness has been captured here and inspires some hope for change.”

Listen to “Winston Smith,” maybe while you’re waiting in line to vote, and stick around for an interview with Hanford Reach below.

Hi Hanford Reach! Congrats on your new single.

Thanks! It feels really good to get this one out for everyone to hear.

Can you tell us a little more on who you are and how you first got into making music

I started really young, having come from a very musical background, so it has always been part of how life goes. I think NOT playing music is weird. My first cassettes were copies of 80’s Rush and Floyd as well as the grungey stuff I grew up with, then I went through the Lookout Records catalog before falling in love with the Police. I started a pop-punk-emo (cringe-worthy genre in retrospect?) band at 15 as a drummer and then just kept learning new instruments and crafting how to write a pop song guised as whatever genre my current band was.

What’s your songwriting process like?

It’s pretty drastic now compared to how I used to write; at this point, it’s a sound, or a groove or an emotion that I need to get out of my head. I’ll mess around with it on the synthesizer and get a melody, or tap out the beat, record it into the voice memos and store it to come back to. If it’s memorable enough, it will turn into something real and I’ll get a proper demo. Then I’ll show it to Leah who kind of gives it either the “You-can-do-better…” or “This-is-awesome-let’s-finish-it-now!” face.

What was your inspiration behind “Winston Smith”?

This one is kind of an outlier thus far for our style. Winston Smith is of course the protagonist in 1984. I reread it last winter and the parallels between our current political situation and that book have obviously been discussed at length, but it really hit home. I just felt like most people could relate to exactly what Winston was feeling; the optimism that “we will rise up and take down Big Brother” that turns to horror when he thinks he’s finally defeated it, only to realize he will always be under their control. I tried to capture that dichotomy between the verses and choruses in this one.

Who are some of your biggest influences/favorite artists?

It’s chasing a specific sound from my youth that I’ve been trying to capture. Something like eighties pop, funneled through a rhythm section that maybe put a record out on SST and toured with Sonic Youth, but if they had access to Kevin Parker’s pedalboard while binging on Stranger Things?

My favorite bands though are The Police, Dungen, Melody’s Echo Chamber, and the Amazing. I’m sure they are what really permeates the songs.

When last we heard from you it was as Sky Picnic. What’s different about Hanford Reach?

Sky Picnic was sort of boxed into a psych-prog sound that really didn’t interest me as we were getting to our final LP. I think we were doing it because we had to; we had a name and a record deal so we would labor over songs to make them sound just so instead of letting them come from the heart. The shows were great fun of course, and those are some of my favorite memories of that time.

Hanford Reach was constructed to be the opposite of that. Our main rule is really no boundaries when it comes to sounds; at this point, we’re pretty comfortable knowing that no matter what we create and pull from, it’ll ultimately form and retain our “sound” (whatever that might be right now as we are still emerging from our primordial soup). And secondly, if something takes more than a month to finish, it’s probably not going to work out, so no belaboring anything. Music is meant to be fun. Like “Winston Smith”, which takes our mutual punk love and melds it with hard psych.

This is also the first material I’ve fully let my lyrics be totally personal. I used to take a year to finish lyrics that carefully created a narrative that dealt with the outside world so as to not expose myself. Removing that veil has opened up new doors and inspired me to write more.

Any new artists/venues/purveyors of the arts you could turn our readers onto?

Our friend Matt Levin has a video series that just started called Translove Airways that digs into what exactly is a psychedelic experience.

A few underground bands I am in love with are Lunar Vacation, Parrot Dream, and Lemolo.

Where can we follow you and where can our readers catch you live next?

The Facebook and Spotify pages are the best bets. We also have an IG (@hanfordreach) and twitter (@hanfordreach.bk) for more fun.

We are working to get the live band together again after a few shows earlier this year and are working on winter dates now!

Any parting thoughts? Open platform!

This song is really just the start right now; we have two EP’s ready to go (the first of which, “Phantoms” should be out for end of year). And the songs keep pouring out, so there is plenty more on the horizon. But next up is some shows, of which there will be more news on at all of the above social media pages once we have it.

Thanks for having us – this was fun!