The Margaret Hooligans

“Hey Love” marks a bit of a departure from their usual tongue and cheek songwriting style, but still retains the classic hallmarks of a Margaret Hooligans tune.  It is a bittersweet love song, exploring the death of a relationship, using the metaphor of an astronaut launching himself into space and leaving his loved ones behind as a way of talking about the distance growing between him and his lover.  The song is told from the perspective of the lover, wondering if he will remember her as he drifts further away.  It has an eerie, ethereal feel, full of psychedelic electric ukulele solos, fuzzed out rhythm uke, crooning vocals, and a steady syncopated beat to drive it all.

“Hey Love” is the second single being released from upcoming album, Saturday Night in Bartertown, due out in July 2023.

“Hey Love” will be available on all streaming platforms, the band’s website and Bandcamp on Friday, Feb. 10th, 2023.  The band is planning to release 5 new singles from the album every 5 weeks from January through June, with the full album release in July 2023.

“Hey Love” was recorded in the basement of Piety Street Publishing, mixed and mastered by Jon Huxtable of Smallfish Recordings, and was produced by Mr. Strontium.

The electric ukulele and drum duo is back with Turntable Tribulations, a follow up to last year’s BoomBox Blasts, which was a compilation of songs written during the Covid-19 lockdowns.  These songs were also written and recorded during the pandemic, but were recorded later, and feature clean recordings and tight production, while retaining the chaotic sloppiness that is the band’s signature style.  Their themes have expanded to include several songs that deal with different aspects of interacting in a virtual world, “Feedback”, a recently released single about opinion overload and oversharing in digital spaces, “Bippity Boppity” the half-rap half sung tirade against performing constantly for the seemingly insatiable beast that is social media, and “Good Morning Micro Man”, a jaunty tongue and cheek about a Silicon Valley billionaire who microdoses LSD “to divine what fund to hedge.”

There is also “Red Rider”, a nod to the fairytale of little Red Riding Hood, but spun to reflect our crazy dystopia of late, “Pete and Roger” a tribute to the founding members of The Who, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend, whose tumultuous friendship is legendary and whose work was a great influence on the duo, and “Oh Lord Hit It”, a song about a drunken dilettante housewife who can’t seem to get it together and whom the band dedicated to Sue Ellen Ewing, the wife of TV show Dallas’s J.R. Ewing.  The actress, Linda Gray, who played Sue Ellen Ewing, approved of it on their social media.

Last on the album is an eleven mini rock opera called “Psycho Diapers”, with four chapters strung together by fake commercial jingles.  It chronicles the story of a despotic man child, unloved by his rich, busy family, shuttled off to boarding school where he learns to wheel and deal to rise to the upper political echelons, only to be brought down when he crosses the wrong group and they use his attraction to their female leader as a foil for his social demise.

Turntable Tribulations will be available on all streaming platforms, the band’s website and Bandcamp on Friday, October 21st.  Pre-orders of the digital and physical CD are currently available on both platforms.

All songs on Turntable Tribulations were recorded in the basement of Piety Street Publishing, mixed and mastered by Jon Huxtable of Smallfish Recordings, and was produced by Mr. Strontium.