Hennessey Share Releases New Single 'We Will Not Be Lovers'

by BWW News Desk

Hennessey's newest single is a sinister dance punk cover of "We Will Not Be Lovers", a deep cut from Celtic folk rock band The Waterboys' 1988 Fisherman's Blues. 

Capturing the chaotic glamour of the band's live shows, the song straddles the line between club banger and poem. Paste premiered the video, praising, "While the original song features a dramatic wash of mandolin, violin and Mike Scott's painfully heartfelt vocals, Hennessey's version adds a layer of surreal, sensual mystique."

Tonight, Bowery Electric presents Live Premiere Sessions #5: featuring Hennessey; "We Will Not Be Lovers" Record Release Show - see here for more information on the Live Sessions series and tonight's release show.

The video, directed by band member E.J. O'Hara, was created in quarantine as an exploration of Virtual Romanticism. It reimagines the imagery of English landscapes, Greek statues, haunted portraits, and memento mori in an alienated virtual reality.

Hennessey is a good old fashioned hipster band from New York. Manhattan to be exact. In the tradition of Le Tigre, Gorillaz, Devo and Roxy Music, they are a group of multidisciplinary artists who have come together to create vintage-pop obsessed electronic dance punk. Leah Hennessey, also known as a playwright and creator of the underground web series Zhe Zhe, is the lead singer and principal songwriter of the band:

"I was writing these brash satirical comedy songs and then I was writing these smol sad songs and I was sick of feeling like a cipher. I needed to be able to write a love song about Jarvis Cocker, for instance, that was clever but also embarrassingly sincere. If you look at like, Prince or Bowie or people like that, there's no separation between the humor and the feeling."

Hennessey's songs are tragically romantic and brutally clever. In the tongue in cheek anthem "Let's Pretend (It's the 80s)," Leah screams the mantra "Let's love like we love money" in the chorus while managing to name check obscure downtown luminaries Lizzie Mercier Descloux and Maripol in the verses.

Synthesizer/drum machine "operator" and Eno-like "non-musician" E.J. O'Hara has been collaborating with Leah "almost since high school". His main concern is to make the beats sound more like Timbaland.

Electronic guitarist Noah Chevan eschews amplifiers and traditional guitar rigs in favor of computer processing.

"The reason we use drum machines is not to reach any kind of perfection, it's to bring the Dionysian energy of dance music back into a rock and roll context." Leah explains. Their live shows are explosive and hypnotic. Chaotic glamour and raw desire. "There aren't a lot of bands trying to do what we do, so we're not really in a genre yet".

If they had to, how would Hennessey describe their music? "Like if Prince produced the Yeah Yeah Yeahs" Leah says, rolling her eyes.

A pretty new band, they've already opened for a wide array of New York artists in hipster clubs under the many sidewalks of New York and Brooklyn. They've self released a single "Sleeping Beauty" and were featured for the video in Vogue Magazine. Zhe Zhe is already 6 Seasons Deep on You Tube and Leah Hennessey and director/Bandmate E.J. O'Hara are giving a new name to indie rock with their multi-disciplinary artistic endeavors and achievements.

                                                                                                                                    

Exclusive: Hennessey Share Dance-Punk Cover of The Waterboys' "We Will Not Be Lovers"
https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/hennessey/hennessey-we-will-not-be-lovers-premiere/