The Hillbilly Moon Explosion are one of those genre-crossing bands that magnetically attract attention wherever they go, the kind of cult band beloved by those in the know who notch up millions of streams while retaining an underground reputation. With one foot in the rockabilly scene thanks to a whole lot of bass-slapping and the other rooted in an old school punk ethos, The Hillbilly Moon Explosion’s sound is curated by Oliver Baroni and Emanuela Hutter, who share lead vocal and songwriting duties on top of playing upright bass and rhythm guitar respectively. Catching them in the middle of festival season for long enough to have a chat is a very lucky coincidence, considering how incredibly in demand they are. “I arrived [back from California] the day before yesterday. I basically had one night to do my laundry and hopped in the car and drove to London. We’re all a bit jet lagged, so you’re in for a really tedious, slaggy gig tonight…we’ll see what happens,” quips Baroni ahead of their only London show this year at New Cross Inn. They’re playing a very quick run of shows across the UK, culminating at Rebellion Festival in Blackpool, which Baroni is looking forward to. “I think it’s our third time [at Rebellion] – it’s always a lot of fun. And I’m rather thrilled to find out that the band on right before us on the Main Stage is Bad Manners! Excellent! It’s going to be great. But they’re also kind of playing at the same time. But Ruts DC, which also kind of my favourite live act, I think they’re playing at the same time as Bad Manners.” “I remember one time we played, the Peacocks were also there,” Hutter gestures to her Peacocks t-shirt. “It’s so special, but also a bit stressful sometimes. I can’t remember if the Peacocks were before us or after us, but we had to change clothes behind the curtain.” “You have to very much treat it like a commando raid. You have your stuff, you do your thing, and you have to get out again!” Baroni laughs.
Hillbilly Moon Explosion @ New Cross Inn, London 2024.08.01
While The Hillbilly Moon Explosion have a lot of fans in the rockabilly and psychobilly scenes, their success isn’t based on appealing to any narrow labels .“Our crowd has always been very mixed,” explains Baroni. “We’ve never played to a specific crowd, not ‘the psychobilly crowd’ or ‘the rockabilly crowd’ or whatever, we’ve always had a mixed crowd. When we play festivals it’s always interesting. We’ve played psychobilly festivals, we’ve played fifties rock n roll festivals, we’ve played Viva Las Vegas, we’ve done Rebellion…and we’ve played heavy metal festivals – I kid you not – in France, where we were probably the ‘joker band’. It always went down really well.” That said, their set at the annual Psychobilly Meeting in Santa Susanna, Spain was a highlight of the entire weeklong festival and Baroni’s summer. “That was absolutely fabulous. I must say I enjoyed the gig, the audience were really lovely and the whole thing has just become such a cosy, family-style event. Already at the airport I met Wes from the Quakes and Andy from Mad Sin…it’s like a class reunion, it’s really nice and comfortable so you have a beer together, and the driver doesn’t show up, so you say ‘screw it’ and take a taxi, and it’s just fun. We were taken care of very well backstage, with the best stage manager ever.” “I liked it because the Peacocks also played,” adds Hutter, “and we went up early to hang out and see the Delta Bombers. It’s kind of like a family meeting, you know?”
Hillbilly Moon Explosion @ New Cross Inn, London 2024.08.01
This year saw the release of their eleventh album, Back In Time, a release with a different flavour to the rest of their back catalogue. “I’d say there was more influence from my songwriting and by my childhood music, which was more seventies, more punk and so on, than this rockabilly thing,” Hutter shares. “With us, it’s never an artistic decision to have an album more in one direction than another,” explains her fellow songwriter. “With this album it’s the same thing. We’ve gone the route of ‘do whatever the song demands’, and if the song ends up sounding like a sixties song because that’s the way it’s written, then that’s how it goes. It’s not ‘ooh, I want to do a sixties album’. That’s why you end up with Emanuela, this Swiss-Italian lady, somehow writing a Bakersfield country song. So we totally went down that route, and kind of intentionally unintentionally made it a sixties sound.” That said, Hutter felt inspiration call from some of her heroes. “1979 is like a tribute to Debbie Harry. When I wrote that song, I wrote it on piano. I had this line in my head from a Blondie song, but with this band I couldn’t do it on piano.” “A lot of people have said, with your songs like 1979, it’s like the Go-Gos,” smiles Baroni. “There’s certainly more of that late seventies-1980-1981 punk in there.”
Hillbilly Moon Explosion @ New Cross Inn, London 2024.08.01
The first taste of Back In Time came last year in the form of lead single Knocked Down, written by Baroni. “It’s my usual happy joy-joy of disappointment and disillusionment,” he jokes. “Emanuela got the ball rolling by saying ‘we’ve got some songs, lets get rehearsing’, and this was way back in lockdown. I wasn’t really writing, but then we found a studio that we wanted to try out, so we decided to rent it for a day, just do two songs and see how it worked out. Because she had two songs ready, I thought ‘I’d better have one too’, so I kind of threw Knocked Down together. It’d been buzzing in my head for a while. We write differently: she writes all the time, I write under pressure.” Coupled with video that’s equal parts moody and hilarious, it was more than enough to get the hype building for their next album. “That’s by Chris McGee of Bopflix: he did the Jackson one, he did Depression,” he says, referring to the videos for their Johnny Cash cover and fan favourite single. “It was his idea of trying of different hats, dressing up, whatever. What you can’t see in that shot is that I’d had a bit of a disagreement, a bit of an altercation with one of these electric rental scooters…well, I fell off. I remember going home after falling off that bloody thing, and thinking I’d walk. Then the police stopped me, and started dabbing my face, and they showed me what I looked like… Ah,” Baroni pauses, remembering how he must have looked. “But we managed with sunglasses [to cover it], but half of that video I was injured.” Second single Sometimes Late At Night followed in February of this year. “It’s actually an old song. I wrote it twenty years ago. I actually wanted to record it for my solo album, but somehow it landed with the Hillbillies. That song is about children hearing their parents fighting, and at the time when we recorded it we needed more songs, so why not this one?” recalls Hutter. ”Yeah, but you were already rehearsing that one”, Baroni says, expanding her point. “We kind of had that one, so recording was pretty quick.” “But we played it very differently, with the riff.”
Hillbilly Moon Explosion @ New Cross Inn, London 2024.08.01
Back In Time takes pride of place in their set at New Cross Inn. The crowd is indeed very mixed, with a few sporting Psychobilly Meeting shirts, but united by a desire to be as close to the front of the sweaty South London venue as possible. Those at the bar crane their necks to catch sight of Hutter taking lead vocal on Sometimes Late At Night, her voice tough, lending a more garage edge to the song when we hear it live. 1979 is lighter and cheerier in performance, an ending credit soundtrack waiting for a film, peppered with a delicious guitar solo from Duncan James and bursting with an an innocence distilled by age and time. “The Californians were really good at this,” jokes Baroni as he begins a clap along, “it’s from the new album you can’t buy at the merch table!” The lack of merchandise doesn’t diminish quite how stunning The Hillbilly Moon Explosion are live, even if we can’t get a signed vinyl today. Knocked Down is even faster and more atmospheric, tempered by subtle harmonies that stir the dark waters, and finishes on a bouncing rhythm and classic rock guitar. Two girls swing each other in circles, giggling to each other at the bar.
Hillbilly Moon Explosion @ New Cross Inn, London 2024.08.01
If you’ve only heard one song by The Hillbilly Moon Explosion before, it’s probably My Love for Evermore, the duet between Hutter and legendary psychobilly frontman Mark ‘Sparky’ Phillips of Demented Are Go. Twenty five million views on YouTube plus thirteen million listens on Spotify have earned it the title of ‘that song’ when Baroni introduces it onstage. It’s ’as much your song as it is ours’, he declares. With guitarist James taking on Phillips’ part, the song feels precarious, more lonely and dangerous than the studio version we’ve heard so many times before. The collaboration between The Hillbilly Moon Explosion and Sparky culminated in 2019’s The Sparky Sessions, a full album combining Hutter’s ethereal vocal style and Phillips’ trademark growl. “I would love to do more recordings with Sparky. I would love to do four more songs,” enthuses Hutter, and at New Cross that night her brilliantly distorted vocals emerge from heartbroken mist of Queen of Hearts, elegant and shattered before being revived by James’ solo. They switch gear effortlessly live, a chant of ‘hey ho, lets go’ the only lead in to Let’s Go, lending the song an almost mystical quality , rough and repeated like an urban legend. Death By My Side projects a wildness, an untamed treasure barely held together by Hutter’s light vocal, then we’re swept into Reno’s sweetness, full of country vintage softness on the solos like well washed cotton, a heat haze mirage of memory. Depression is dark, serious but so danceable, and Baroni throws in so much so much gorgeous, galloping bass click as the melody playfully twists between highs and lows on Broken Heart. “I’m getting too old for this song,” he jokes, swapping instruments with Hutter on the bluesy, provocative Love You Better.
Hillbilly Moon Explosion @ New Cross Inn, London 2024.08.01
In the middle of their stellar originals on their records are more than a few covers, the kind of re-imaginings that make you appreciate hidden qualities in the songs we know already. There’s no big pop covers on Back In Time though. “You’ve got one or two songs that’d you’d love to cover,” Baroni says to Hutter, “there’s a Donna Summer song that’d be great. While I agree with you that they would be fabulous, I don’t want to be ‘the band that does covers’. There wasn’t a debate, there wasn’t a song that we decided against.” Their take on Blondie’s Call Me at New Cross, prompting full, confident dance moves, and it’s so much fun, a timeless and irresistible reinterpretation and reinforcement of the original. “Emanuela will sing a song by her greatest influence: that is, the late great Ronnie Spector,” grins Baroni to introduce their encore, Baby I Love You. It’s just, lovely stripped of its gloss to make something real, owing as much of a debt the Ramones as to Spector.
Hillbilly Moon Explosion @ New Cross Inn, London 2024.08.01
After Rebellion Festival is out the way, the songwriters know what’s next on their agenda. “First a vacation!” Hutter laughs. “There’a bunch of videos that are already in the can. We’re going back to the US in October…” says Baroni, before Hutter finishes his sentence. “…then we’re going to England again in February, and Spain in March.” Indeed, Baroni announces onstage that, “We will be back! I think we’re playing the 100 Club and we will have merch,” before leaving us with Maniac Lover, a perfect finish with James’ guitar building the foundation for Hutter’s otherworldly high notes. Regardless of your favourite genre, or the musical tribe you belong to, there’s room in your record collection for back in time, and room for you at The Hillbilly Moon Explosion’s next show.
Interview with The Hillbilly Moon Explosion and review of their show at New Cross Inn on 1st August 2024 by Kate Allvey, photography by Pauline Di Silvestro.
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