The Honey Brothers

Time Flies Like a Peach, the new album by the Brooklyn-based quintet The Honey Brothers, began with the unintentional vocal mauling of a playful proverb, "time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a peach." The band liked the mistake—it seemed to touch on a big topic (the passage of time) without taking it too seriously. This quality of winking at big topics, be they empathy ("Empathy Gap") or intimacy ("New Attitude") has been pretty characteristic of the band generally. The idea even extends to the Brothers’ approach to their instruments, that being, as lead vocalist DS Posner puts it, “hey, let's have some ukuleles hang out with some sexy synthesizers on a beach with Ric Ocasek's back-catalog and a couple of nude electric banjos.”

As often is the way with art, something a little different came out of the Kingston sessions, recorded with producer (and John Waters lookalike) Malcolm Burn. It’s not a new band, but it definitely represents a new, less flippant attitude to the band’s work. Maybe it had something to do with being in Malcolm Burn’s house—a serious-looking Tim Burton mansion on a hill. Maybe it was Malcolm's seriousness itself -- he can be witheringly blunt at times. Rather than have the guys plug in and assume the Eddie-Murphy-in-Party-All-The-Time-video headphone position, the band gathered in a close circle with just a few instruments and played through the song until something —Malcolm called it the "soul of the song"—emerged. Egos were bruised, songs were sliced up and sometimes left for dead, but what emerged was a much more deliberate thing than The Honey Brothers had ever committed to Pro Tools.

Time Flies features contributions by all members of the group. Many songs were reworked on the spot with a collaborative intensity that would have suited the Brill Building crowd back in the day. It has disco (“Green and Gold”) and early new wave (“New Attitude”), Andrew Vladeck folk (“Passing Knowledge” was his baby) and, somehow a bit of Squeeze in all the double vocals (first unintentional, then embraced). Naturally, the Brothers had the usual worries: Did it capture their live energy? Was it even fun? And what’s Paul Simon doing smoking a joint with Elvis Costello outside Belle and Sebastian's rehearsal space? But then while off pursuing their many other interests, the band let it sit—and lo and behold, it was good. After a band has been together for the better part of a decade, a record starts to reflect time together—thus “Time U Space Love.” When the guys heard that botched proverb on a playback, it must have begged to be kept. Time does fly like a peach after all. Right?

To fly back in time for a bit of band back-story, rewind to late 2001. “The Honey Brothers began as a way to find joy in life,” says Ari Gold, who, with his college friends Andrew Vladeck and DS Posner, formed the group’s original nucleus as an East Village ukulele trio known for impromptu street performances. That familial, communal vibe was cemented even further when Adrian Grenier joined and the members decided to take new names as brothers. Adrian says, “At first it was sort of a symbolic thing, but now I think our DNA has merged on a molecular level.”

Their recording career began in September of 2005, when the guys were mourning the accidental death of the original bass-playing Brother, Pierre Michel, who had joined the band along with Adrian in 2002. They hadn’t written a new song in some time, but in homage to Pierre, they (with Ari’s brother Ethan on bass) decided to independently release an album, 2006’s Songs for Your Sister. The album garnered considerable acclaim and led to a growing fan-base in the northeast, including several sold-out performances at NYC’s Bowery Ballroom. The Village Voice later opined that Sister “manages to reference the country-tinged sensitivity of the Silver Jews, the summery harmonies of the Beach Boys, and the zany weirdness of Ween.”

In 2008, Ethan left the band and was replaced by Dan Green, a straight up rock and roller with little patience for anything jammy. The Brothers entered the studio of Brooklyn-based producer Brad Albetta and recorded the 4-song EP Demonstration. The EP includes such driving New Wave dance-rock gems as “City,” the title track, and “Won’t Last Long,” none of which would sound out of place on a late-’70s post-punk album thanks to their joyful melodies, angular bass-lines, group-sung choruses, and twitchy grooves. In 2010, the boys began recording Time Flies with producer Malcolm Burn—a slow process to be sure, but one that was worth the wait.

“What I’ve noticed with our new songs is a feeling of searching for community,” Ari says. “I think the band coming together when we did, and the way we did, made us want to make music that helps us all live in the present. Music can have longing, humor, and joy. I think our music is trying to find the utopia of love in a world that might be going to shit.”