Band of the week: Hello Image

It’s a rainy afternoon in Cairo. Mud is everywhere and the sky is grey. Sad figures stand about attempting to cross flooded streets, getting splashed by passing cars. The city has an apocalyptic feel, as often happens when rain falls on desert towns. This prompts a need for a mirroring melancholia-soaked soundtrack.

Hello Image’s “Weird Growths” shuffles on the iPhone. The lyrics are enticing and perfectly fitting for the sometimes-welcomed dismalness known to rainy days in crowded cities all over the world.

A fuzzed-out guitar sets down the simple yet catchy melody and a reverbed rhythm guitar gives the music a strange sort of swing, backed by a bellowing bassline and steady drumbeat. The sound and rainy scene mesh into each other appropriately as the EP plays out, alternating between sad and sardonic poetry and layers of distorted guitars and lo-fi textures.

Egyptian-Australian journalist and songwriter Steven Viney has an uncanny ability for making music that fits odd, somber scenes, like rain pouring on a desert. Written and recorded mostly in Egypt last year, Viney’s “Hello Image” debut EP is an oddly disorienting and comfortably familiar anthem for lost, lonely-hearted 21st century kids living in a sea of transience.

The song continues, and Viney sings:

Viney was already writing songs at the age of 14, in an effort to imitate, and later rebel against, his classical musician father by means of guitars, rock and youthful creativity. Having lived in and out of Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, Singapore, Australia and Japan, he inevitably learned a thing or two about the existence of perpetually traveling youth.

Now 29-years-old, Viney has run through continents of musical identities, partaking in a range of performance projects during his time in London (2004-2007) and New York (2007-2009). He established his “Hello Image” solo project when he found himself back in Cairo from 2010 to 2013, and it seems that all his lonely transience is manifesting itself here, resulting in an ever-growing Soundcloud of beautifully self-reflective yet playful indie and experimental rock tracks.

Other stand-out moments include the perverse apathy found in “There’s Room in the Closet for Everyone,” and the free-wheeling ode to youth titled “Drugs.” The latter was featured on reputable indie music website BIRP!, which release a monthly compilation of new music that is free to stream or download. A personal favorite comes in the form of a melodramatic, 80s-style pop track titled “Pocket Call,” with Morrissey-esque lines:

“Wednesday” also exhibits the conversational capabilities of Viney’s moody guitars. Like many of his songs, it ends with a field of open space in which several guitars debate between apocalyptic garage-rock moods and angsty shoe-gazing pedals and effects, creating another unpredictable sonic sketch.

In live shows, Viney is pretty captivating for a guy with a guitar. Using several pedals to create his bassline and guitar rhythms, Viney plays the role of three on stage. Occasionally he is joined by his wife, Maha El Sherif, on backing vocals and tambourine — but for the most part he recreates his recorded sound live by himself, with remarkable agility.

And while Viney has moved yet again, this time to Montreal, the two constants that continue to travel through his music are guitars in dialogue with each other, and the unabashed lonerism at the heart of his writing. 

In his most recent song, “Gaslighting,” Viney presents himself with a clearer and more confident crooning vocal style, embedding references to the Ingrid Bergman film the title alludes to in his poetry, with stunning lines such as:

Caught in life a peculiar case of all
Things right with the human psyche and all 
Is known all is never known as one
Thing turns to another and you’re balled
Behind, the eight ball, it’s all weird
I would know
Paula would know

And the clincher:

“Hello Image” is a phrase borrowed from a Cure song titled “M.” And the project is precisely as Viney describes it — a sonic snapshot, with lyrical observations, of moments that may or may not pass you by. Although Viney is still honing his self-recording abilities, his DIY attitude has enabled him to release an impressively steady flow of songs that continue to progress in style, recording quality and overall composition.

Lyrically, his music cuts to the core of relatable self-reflection. As long as there are quick-witted, sensitive 20 to 30-somethings out of sync with their surroundings, Viney will be a poetic voice telling them they are not alone.