Brooklyn-based Hellbirds are living up to their name, creating some kind of devilish musical sorcery that virtually every pop band of the past 50 years has tried to do without being so blatant about it: Combining the Beatles with the Beach Boys.
Only Hellbirds, led by the Vandelles‘ surf/psych frontman genius Jasno Swarez, are combining the two groups, literally.
Gearing up for the summer release of new album Pet Peppers, Hellbirds have releasing their first single, a live, completely re-recorded mashup-up of the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields” and the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.”
And as expected, “Strawberry Vibrations” is trippy as fuck.
“This is what everyone is already doing, but I am owning it like Warhol through the lense of Matisse’s cutouts,” Swarez tells Vanyaland. “It’s postmodernist music.”
The album artwork is inspired by Sgt. Pepper, with the band members and their parents behind them — and their parents behind their parents. “Art, like children, are the products of parent pieces — new but also nostalgic, just like these songs are new and also derivative. People have called me derivative for so long with The Vandelles. Instead of running from it I’m choosing it.”
Pet Peppers will be slowly unveiled with a new song each day (!!!) starting July 21, and the release party goes down August 2 at Saint Vitus in Brooklyn.
Listen to “Strawberry Vibrations” below…