Hans Pucket
Share Album Title Track ‘No Drama’
No Drama LP Out November 4th via Carpark Records
Pre-order/Pre-save here
Wellington, four-piece Hans Pucket writes nervy but effortlessly danceable rock songs about feeling bad. Firmly established at home, where Liz Stokes of The Beths has declared them “New Zealand’s best band“. Hans Pucket made their foray into North America last month with the announcement of their signing to Carpark Records (Cloud Nothings, The Beths) for the release of their second full-length album No Drama and the with the track ‘My Brain Is A Vacant Space‘.
Today, the band are sharing a second track from the LP, the album’s title track ‘No Drama’.
The track encapsulates several of Hans Pucket’s most endearing qualities, managing to eloquently and earnestly explore a feeling while maintaining a sense of playfulness and flashing some imaginative musicianship without sacrificing the approachable, classic pop songwriting at the band’s core.
“This song is about social anxiety and being surrounded by very unhappy people on the internet,” frontman Oliver Devlin explains. “Sometimes, of course, very rightfully hurt people are dealing with their experiences of injustice, inequality or trauma. I think part of the song is being overwhelmed by all of this, the desire to bury my head in the sand and the fear of who I could become if I did switch off from it all”.
Both lyrically and sonically, No Drama is a departure for Hans Pucket from their 2018 debut Eczema. “I realized I didn’t want to write any more real heartbreak songs,” says Oliver Devlin. “We were and still are a live band. We’re still trying to make catchy music that people can dance to, but also really interesting to us: songs about growing up and finding how you exist in the world.” Songs like ‘My Brain Is a Vacant Space’ with its blistering guitars and ebullient hooks, hone in on the feeling that you have nothing to offer, while ‘Bankrupt,’ a fuzzed-out punk track, boasts lines like “I don’t know if I’ll always feel like / I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”
Recorded with the band’s good friend and former tour mate Jonathan Pearce of The Beths at his Auckland studio, No Drama is full of big leaps, immaculate arrangements, and a ton of immediate grooves. “We were very ambitious when we first started recording this,” says bassist Callum Devlin. “Intentionally, we left heaps of space in the track so we could add strings and horns. Because we were very measured and quite deliberate with the parts we had. It was a really fun process filling in the gaps.”
No Drama came together over several years, and during its creation, the band added multi-instrumentalist Callum Passels, who provided all the horn arrangements on the LP. With Pearce producing, other Beths bandmates like Benjamin Sinclair added string arrangements while singer Elizabeth Stokes provided backing vocals.
Overall it’s a remarkably eclectic record where the smooth pop of a track like ‘Kiss the Moon’ can coexist perfectly with the Abbey Road freakout of ‘Some Good News.’ “We didn’t want to be afraid of our 15-year-old self’s influences,” says Oliver Devlin. “We really wanted to make an album that teenage us would just be amazed by.”
The result is Hans Pucket’s most sparkling and confident collection yet. While it’s danceable and fun, it’s also a thoughtful exploration of anxiety, a call for empathy in a turbulent time, and a relatable reminder that it’s hard to figure things out.
No Drama LP Out November 4th via Carpark Records. Pre-order/Pre-save here.
No Drama Tracklist
1. My Brain is a Vacant Space
2. You Must Chill
3. Misery Loves Company
4. No Drama
5. Honey
6. The Square
7. Some Good News
8. Bankrupt
9. Kiss The Moon
10. Drag Me Through Your Heart
11. I’m Not Opposed To
