Secret History: Hoover's The Lurid Traversal of Route 7

According to McRedmond, D.C.-area bands were a big part of Hoover' development, especially Fugazi, Soul Side, and Government Issue. "And Ignition is key to it all," he said. "When I first saw Nation of Ulysses, I thought they were like Ignition. They wore suits, but Ignition had already done that."

Erskine feels that Hoover were able, over time, to find their niche. "I don't know how to explain it," he said. "It's like, we didn't have an agenda, you know what I mean? ... there were a whole batch of songs that never saw the light of day because they were really derivative. It took a while for us to sort of find our own sound."

And that sound was sinister and edgy, thrillingly dynamic. "[It] was something that was kind of dark and ethereal, and we were able to get out a lot of our youthful aggressions," said Erskine, "but not in a way that hardcore was doing. It was just something we found for us."

Much of Hoover's unique greatness sprung from the musical relationship between Erskine's bass playing and Farrall's drumming."Fred and Chris together," explained McRedmond, "I think that's a really big difference, just because it's a little funkier sounding rhythm section. You might hear bands with a drummer that's like that, but the bass player isn't. And you might have a good bass player, but the drummer isn't that way. It was just was pretty funky and easy to play with. And you know, Fred thought about [Hoover's sound] a lot. Him and Chris together were, like, arranging it." Added Erskine, "Everybody was trying to find something a little different to make their own. That's one of the things that was great about what was going on in D.C. at the time."

Hoover began recording at the urging of local scene stalwart and Dischord Records founder Ian MacKaye, who was immediately taken with the band. "We played at some show," recalled McRedmond, "and Ian came up to me and was like, 'That's great. Are you guys going to record?' I said, 'We don't have any money,' and he said, 'That's bullshit.' We did one of those Dischord half releases. I guess then it was probably $1,000, or $1,200 to do the whole process – who you're going to record with, who you''re going to get to master it and press it….It’s like a loan to get a record out. So if you're selling 1000 records, you should be able to give [the label] back the $1,000 or $1,200."

As great as they were, Hoover's output was pretty limited. A handful of singles, debut LP The Lurid Traversal of Route 7, and a semi-posthumous five-track swan song are the full extent of the Hoover catalog. That said, Lurid Traversal is packed with enough passion and inspiration to last lesser bands a lengthy career, just under 60 minutes of blistering post-hardcore brilliance. It's essential.

The LP's 13 tracks thrive on tension and release, as the band stretches melodies past the breaking point and revels in the breaking. "Pretender" rides waves of stunray guitar and pummeling beats, vocals delivered in a desperate bark. Serpentine basslines guide "Electrolux" into thrashing fields of distortion, dreadful and breathless, while "Cuts Like Drugs" staggers through a bleary narcotic haze drenched in hazy feedback and bad vibes. A War of the Worlds radio play sample lends "Dries" an eeriness enhanced by the edgy guitar runs, and "Return" is relentlessly driving, snare hits connecting like body blows.

Geoff Turner (Gray Matter, Egg Hunt, Three, New Wet Kojak) recorded the LP at his studio, WGNS, which at that time was located in the basement of Turner's house off Glebe Rd. in Arlington. According to McRedmond and Erskine, Turner took a very active role in the recording process, contributing ideas and helping to craft the feel and mood of Lurid Traversal. "I think Geoff got what we were going for from the start," said Erskine. "The whole thing was whatever we were thinking at the time, like, 'Okay, we have to really invest all our energy into trying to make something that stands out.' And I think Geoff was really into that, just kind of threw himself into it, and it worked really well for us. So there's a lot of spontaneity in the room, too."

Turner was especially open to the blending of ambient noises into the album mix. "We played this tape behind us live, one was War of the Worlds. And this other one that I found in a phone booth that was an evangelist guy, and he was speaking, like, from the Bible, but it rhymed, everything rhymed. So [Turner] knew that we wanted to link it together, and he was like, 'Oh yeah, we can bring the microphones outside and record the cars and the crickets,'" McRedmond recalled.

After Lurid Traversal, Hoover essentially broke up, with the members heading off to different bands and projects. Several years later, they reunited to record a final album, 1998's Hoover.

One can hear echoes of The Lurid Traversal of Route 7 in Modest Mouse, Burning Airlines, Bluetip, the Young Widows (several members of whom were once in Breather Resist, which in fact took their name from a Hoover song), and other acts who embraced Hoover’s brand of smart aggression and serrated auditory assault. Says Erskine of the LP today, "I love it. For me, I don't think it's a perfect record or anything, there are certain things I'd like to be different, but I think we were pretty young, and I definitely liked the songs. It was the first full-length record I'd done; I've since probably done, like, 20 records. I think for my first record, it's always going to be really important to me."

Hoover