Once The Hoot Hoots are upon you, you can’t shake them. With their newest offering, Feel the Cosmos, Seattle’s very best owl-themed band continues to create music that makes keeping still a losing proposition. It’s dancy, it’s fresh, and, by golly, it just never quits. Their sound is their very own – equal parts lyrical whimsy, 64-bit synths, and silly yet ponderous lyrics. This time though, it’s more mature – a grown-up version of our composite inner child’s theme song. Add the quintet’s musical talent to their irresistible friendly and kind personas, and you get a band that audiences can’t help but cheer for. When musicians such as The Hoot Hoots release an album, we all hope it’s good. This time, it is undeniably superb, making the cheering quite easy.

The lyrical wonderland the band is known for is the result of a strong teamwork between brothers Adam (guitar/lead vocals) and Chris Paire (drums), who in the past have been responsible for such lyrical concepts as riding robotic bears with missile teeth. This brain trust between siblings has come a long way since they first began writing together. Feel the Cosmos is a masterwork of lyrical less-is-more. “Adam and I split that down the middle usually,” Chris said when asked who writes most, adding, “he usually fixes grammar and stuff since he sings [the lyrics], and he was an English major and all that nonsense.”

The best facet of the 6-track EP is how easily The Hoot Hoots blend seemingly ridiculous lyrics with such driving beats and unapologetically simple melodies. They seem to have found the right balance of silliness and honest-to-god rock and roll talent, which is at the core of what makes them so damn fun to experience. The band’s musicianship impresses so much that the listener gets the feeling that the band could just as easily be the world’s best country-western group, or the most popular emo-hipster-indie band. Knowing this makes it all the more fun when they write songs about what one might do with a newfound 20 bucks, spinning in circles publicly, and wasting a day playing video games.

With this EP, the four-piece’s musical maturity is represented like a good red sauce – where too much or too little of any component would just be wrong. But The Hoot Hoot’s balance of all their qualities is tremendous. The unwavering undertones of the synths, the present yet unobtrusive sounds of the guitar, and the always solid-as-a-rock rhythm section creates a leveled attack that is not too silly, not too serious, not too fast, and by no means slow. What comes out of the mix is driving, fresh, tight, and delectable. It’s the newest EP from the seasoned Hoot Hoots and it gets a big thumbs up!

The band releases the EP Thursday night at Barboza(under Neumos) and will be touring the west coast immediately following. Keep track of The Hoot Hoots HERE! And listen to their new single from Feel The Cosmos titled “Home” HERE! Enjoy!

– Andrew Harris, music writer, The Monarch Review