Fusing power pop and indie rock with danceable grooves and lush instrumentation, Hey Again is a 4-piece outfit founded by songwriter/guitarist Daniel Lerner, alongside Jason Ross on guitar, Alex Scheitinger on bass, and Robert Harary on drums.
I caught up with Daniel to talk about his early musical experiences, how the band got together and the making of their new E.P. “Trial Run”.
CMM-What was the first music that really made an impact on you as a kid and what artists or bands did you enjoy the most?
Daniel-I was about 6 years old when I first saw the music video for “Helicopter” by Bloc Party, maybe on Vh1 or MTV. But this particular music video (which apparently wasn’t even the official music video, but an animated version of the original that the band erased from most of their websites) just really caught my young eye. Watching this alternate universe of this band playing their song, as they get teleported through light beams to some other dimension, changed the way I heard this song. The song itself is home to one of my favorite choruses of all time, as well as an all-time killer guitar hook and bridge – but placed in the new context of this visual, the song felt new somehow, and awakened a newfound emotion toward the music I enjoy.
Bloc Party was one of many bands that my brothers had shown me when I was young. Alongside this band were other early 2000s indie acts like The Strokes, Spoon, Wilco, Arctic Monkeys, Gorillaz, Oasis.
CMM-When did you first start creating your own music?
Daniel-I was kinda mumbling songs to myself ever since I was a kid, and started putting pen to paper and taking it seriously when I was maybe 9 years old. For years I wanted to pursue a full-on solo career, and I had my best friends as my band for the last couple of years of that solo project. But eventually we realized we were forming something entirely new and separate from that solo project. We felt so much more like a creative unit. So after a few years of unofficially being a band, we decided to officially form Hey Again in late 2023.
CMM- The band recently released a phenomenal E.P. called “Trial Run”. What was the writing and recording process for those tracks like? Any particular gear or instruments you used during the recording sessions that helped inspire you?
Daniel-Thank you for the kind words! It’s funny, this whole EP is a bit all over the place in terms of when the songs were written – the earliest song is from 4 years ago. Most of the songs were written in 2024 though. I spent this time journaling and needling through themes of listlessness, longing, and wanting to get to the next phase of your life. Working on the songs with the full band, these isolated emotions became these huge and confident musical arrangements. And as we performed the songs live, we explored how we could capture that energy in the studio. Our incredible producer Rain Johannes knew exactly how to capture that sound with us and he allowed us to truly play his studio like an instrument. We tracked as a full band for 3 days straight, most of us sleeping at his studio in Staten Island, and then we did 1 extra day of just guitar recording to really go in and stack the noisier effects. A few gear highlights: for amps we played through a Vox AC15, a JCM800, and a ’68 reverb – and Rain Johannes broke in his new microphone, a gorgeous Royer R-121.
CMM-If the group could score any film director’s movie who would it be and what would the film be about?
Daniel-The first directors that come to mind would be Charlie Kaufman or Spike Jonze. Those 2 directors at their peak created some of my favorite movies of all time, and I feel as though our music strikes a lot of similarly nostalgic and evocative notes. The movie would be some sort of coming-of-age movie spread out over the course of many years, with a focus on interpersonal relationships and the drive toward self-improvement (so basically Her, Synecdoche New York, Eternal Sunshine, and a dash of PTA’s Punch Drunk Love).
CMM-What do you have coming up next?
Daniel-We’re playing our EP release show this Wednesday 4/29 at Nublu Classic! Excited to bring these new songs out on the road later this summer and fall as well.
