The Hard Quartet

The Arc of The Hard Quartet

The pivots — what forced The Hard Quartet to reinvent.

1. 01

   The Brooklyn Sessions

   In late 2023, the four musicians quietly gathered at Strange Weather in Brooklyn with engineer Daniel Schlett to lay down basic tracks. No one came with finished demos or a grand master plan. Sweeney and Kelly traded guitar duties while Jim White laid down his trademark off-kilter shuffle on the fly. You can hear the physical room on the recording, especially on the tracks where Malkmus steps back to let Kelly take the lead vocal. The result is a scrapheap of ideas that actually sounds like a working band instead of a remote file-sharing project.

Influences

• The Groundhogs — Matt Sweeney has repeatedly cited Tony McPhee's heavy, eccentric British blues-rock outfit as a major blueprint for his guitar style. You can hear those jagged, slightly overdriven pentatonic runs all over the track 'Rio's Song.' It is that specific mid-70s heavy-blues dirt that avoids standard classic rock cliches.
• Dirty Three — Drummer Jim White spent decades in this instrumental trio, honing a style that ignores traditional timekeeping for pure texture. His tumbling, brush-heavy style on 'Earthless' carries that same dramatic, stormy tension he perfected with Warren Ellis. It is drumming that acts as a lead instrument rather than a metronome.
• Sandy Bull — Emmett Kelly's guitar playing draws heavily from Bull's pioneering blend of American folk and Eastern raga styles. You can hear this acoustic-leaning, drone-heavy fingerpicking on the quieter, more expansive moments of the self-titled record. It provides the necessary space to contrast with the louder Malkmus-led tracks.
• The Fall — Stephen Malkmus's entire vocal delivery and angular guitar phrasing have been tied to Mark E. Smith's post-punk blueprint since the early nineties. On 'Hey,' the deadpan, rhythmic spoken-word delivery and sharp guitar stabs show that the influence remains hardwired into his DNA. It is the cynical, sharp-edged counterweight to the album's prettier folk-rock moments.
• Chavez — Matt Sweeney's 90s math-rock outfit defined a very specific type of heavy, interlocking guitar interplay. The twin-guitar attack of Sweeney and Emmett Kelly on 'Renegade' utilizes those same tense, slightly discordant structures. It is the direct link to the mid-90s Matador Records catalog that both players helped shape.