Hallelujah the Hills are kind of indie rock institution in Boston, always finding new ways to bring experimental artistry to their post-punk sound.
Case-in-point: over the course of 4 months in quarantine, lead singer Ryan Walsh decided to make a stop-motion music video for their song "The Memory Tree," from the band's recent album I'm You. He handcrafted little ghost puppets and tiny ghost houses and put together a whole elaborate world to tell a whimsical story of spirits and transdimensional discovery, in the style of a classic silent film.
The six-minute short blends the hand-done animation with live action. It's a genuine joy, with the song acting as a perfect as a swelling score to carry along the story of this little ghost seeking out a memory tree across the multiverse.
Walsh also has a great new-ish book about the true story behind Van Morrison's Astral Weeks album, which, as I learned involved some wild true crime capers in the seedy underbelly of late 1960s Boston. (I was also once stopped on the subway by a woman who asked me "Are you writer?" then "Are you a musician, too?" and then told me she had just bought "my" book, which it turned out was actually Walsh's Astral Weeks book.)
