Review | Hockey Dad – The Clip

Label: Self-Released

By Meg Ivy Brunning

There are artists who soundtrack moments in your life, who feel as though they are there for you when no one else is. The kind that when you hear them, they don’t just bring back memories, but drop you right back into the moment itself. 

For me, Hockey Dad is one of those bands.

Their music takes me straight back to days spent in South London as an art student, where everything felt perfectly infinite. I had a city laid out bare at my feet, an endless canvas of possibility, a story that was yet to be written. I could freely run through the streets at 3am with my best friends by my side, if I so wished to. Not a worry in my head or my heart, the streetlights blurring into golden lines on the pavements on the way back home. I still felt entirely real, and now London Meg Ivy (as she was affectionately dubbed) feels like a fond, faraway memory I talk about to my new friends in Cardiff. 

Listening to Hockey Dad’s newest EP, ‘The Clip’, felt like a direct, unexpected conversation with that past version of myself and somewhere in the middle of listening, maybe it was towards the end of ‘Lifeline‘ or at the start of ‘Backyard‘, I felt like I could be that person again. Like she was back within reach. 

The project of childhood best friends Zach Stephenson and Billy Fleming, the Australian duo have set a global standard for modern surf and skate rock. It’s an invigorating collection of six tracks that feels both nostalgic but fresh, a feeling perhaps owed to the fact that it sees the duo return independently for the first time. There is something so familiar about this EP, as if the band has returned to a feeling and a sound that defined their older tracks. It feels like a homecoming, for both the band and for me as a listener. 

The EP is filled with swirling guitar solos that climb into your head and settle down there, leaving you wanting to learn how to play just so you can jam alongside them. The music isn’t just background noise; it’s a call to action. The crashing drums and angsty vocals on some of the tracks – especially the lead single ‘All Hat No Cattle’ takes me back to being seventeen and feeling like the world is just a little too big for me. Like I can’t quite fit even though I had ample room. 
The band shared that the song’s name came from a moment where they were at a petrol station, witnessing a man pull up in a new truck, fresh cowboy boots on his feet; whilst an older lady muttered under her breath: “That boy’s all hat and no cattle.” The band says it became a self-deprecating nod to their own identity as “fake cowboys.” That restless feeling, yearning to be somewhere else and maybe someone else too, is so perfectly encapsulated here and throughout the EP.
The melodies make you want to clap your hands and dance around your room, just like you used to when your Dad was blasting his favourite indie-rock throughout the house. I remember the way you could hear it from every room as I spun in circles and giggled when I could hear my Dad shout along to the words. That simple, uninhibited joy is bottled within this music. The EP feels so well-paced you can’t quite believe it’s over when it eventually comes to an end. It’s a seamless sprint that has the heart going and the mind thinking. Not too much, just a little, about the person you were and the person you are slowly becoming. All in good fun, right? 

‘The Clip‘ has now become the new soundtrack to this part of my life – whatever that may be. To be honest, I’m still trying to figure that out. From the first track to the end, it explodes into your ears and makes itself known, a beautiful, visceral experience. My favourite has to be ‘Hole’. There’s a line towards the end of the track that stuck with me, “I am not afraid of my reflection,” and for the first time, I can confidently say I’m really not. Not anymore. And, isn’t that something?

This EP is a powerful, honest journey of who I used to be, the music I loved (and continue to love) and the person I can be now. 
It’s also a reminder that no matter how much time passes, you will always return to things you once loved when you were a teenager / in your early twenties and there’s something so wonderful about that. Right?
Thank you Hockey Dad for reminding me that some things – like the person you used to be – never really leave you and maybe they were never meant to.