The Show's latest installment of the Tiny Desert Concert series features Hyperbella.
Self-described "intergalactic neo-soul" band is known for their energetic performances and songs you can’t help but bop your head to. At the beginning of this year Hyperbella embarked on their Rebirth tour, officially marking the band’s return from a four-year hiatus.
In this second iteration of Hyperbella, instead of being a four-piece band, Cassidy Hilgers and Carly Bates were at the helm together, playing as a duo or hiring other musicians to create a full band sound. Hilgers sings and plays bass and guitar, Bates sings and plays keyboard.
Hilgers and Bates joined The Show to discuss what it was like to write songs with one other person rather than three. They performed at Grand Avenue Records in Phoenix.
Full conversation
CASSIDY HILGERS: That was a really different way of writing for us. Like, we had to engineer the whole demos, we basically wrote every part and then we would hire musicians to play the songs on the recording. And now we're doing that by hiring these baddies — Jake Silverman, Connor Sample and Benjamin Cortez — and we've just fallen in love, man. There's a lot of love.
MARK BRODIE: What is your process like? Because obviously you're playing different instruments, but you also sing together. You both have fairly extensive musical backgrounds. What is your process together? How does that work?
CARLY BATES: For most of the songs we would just kind of get together and see what you know was present in our creative, I don't know, present in our bodies.
HILGERS: Juice.
BATES: Our juice, we would kind of direct each other in terms of, we've got this groove going, Cass would ask me to like lay some chords down and we'd workshop that together and then we'd, like, switch roles and Cass would find another part that, layered really nicely on top of it. We basically created the whole track before we'd write lyrics, which we also did together, kind of exploring, you know, what are some of the things that we each wanna talk about and how do we communicate that with metaphor and rhymes and all the things. So yeah, it was really collaborative at every step of the way.
BRODIE: Yeah, it sounds like you really did everything together.
HILGERS: Yeah, it's beautiful.
BRODIE: So, each of you had some jazz background growing up. I mean, Carly, you said you started with classical but then moved to jazz, and Cassidy, you started a little bit it sounds like with jazz. Is that something you're thinking about as you're creating these songs?
BATES: I think that the thing that jazz or a jazz education is or has like really helped us with in Hyperbella is our understanding of harmony and ensemble playing and meter we play around with a lot of mixed meter writing. So, yeah, I think a lot of our influences are also influenced by jazz but not necessarily like, in the box jazz artists themselves. So yeah, there's kind of a gray area I would say.
BRODIE: Do you find that musical theater is showing itself in your work now?
HILGERS: I'd say performing on stage for sure. The way I relate lyrics and the way my body moves.
BRODIE: Definitely had a lot of movement while you were playing.
HILGERS: Yes. We like to move. Blessings to musical theater.
BRODIE: Well, it's interesting because I have to say just as an outside observer watching you perform, yes, you're definitely playing the music, but it really looks like you are almost more feeling the music, than just playing it or performing it. Like is that something that you are aware of when you're doing it?
HILGERS: Yeah, I'd say these songs specifically, when we wrote them. It was during COVID actually and it was all the deep stuff we've been wanting to say and talk about, and Carly and I had the space and time to do that together during lockdown. So, I think these songs hit differently when we perform them now and we can really just immerse ourselves and be in that moment that we wrote the song about.
BRODIE: A lot of the stuff you're writing about are very personal type things, things that have happened to you or things that are personal. Like is there a line, that you are, like, I guess how do you decide what you're willing to let the world see or know about you or about hurt that you've had or experiences that you've had and what maybe do you not want to put into a song?
HILGERS: Maybe it depends on each song. Like, “Say Something,” I probably wouldn't tell you exactly what it means. But, so the audience can kind of interpret what that means for them. But, other songs like, we wrote a song about my cat named Matchka who died and she lived to be 21 so that's like explicitly about a cat and you can kind of hear the lyrics and how that would be, “Oh that's a cat.” But, I feel like we kind of hide the true meaning a little bit and, and I don't know why, but we do do that.
BATES: Yeah, I think that's the cool thing about songwriting is like you can be really, really vulnerable but not necessarily explicit with what it is that you're, yeah, what the topic is or what the details are. And I think, I think an audience, our intention is that our audience can connect with that in, in whatever way, project their own meaning onto these songs.
BRODIE: When you know what the song is about and it's about something particularly personal, does that affect how you perform it, Cassidy?
HILGERS: Definitely.
BRODIE: How so?
HILGERS: I feel like, well, every time I sing “Say Something,” in the end it is like. So when I recorded that in the studio, I think we did maybe like three takes and I never wrote a part for that ending. It was just like, “We'll see what happens in the studio,” and I just, that was probably like the best moment musically for me like just emotion wise, not like singing wise, but yeah, that was pretty good, too. Anyway, but emotionally, emotionally because I was literally sobbing by the time I got done with that and like I try to go there every time I perform it live and just like really immerse myself into that moment and the meaning.
BRODIE: That sounds like it would be emotionally exhausting to try to get yourself to a point of breaking down in tears every time you sing a song or, you know, have to go to a particular place every time you perform a song. It sounds like it would be a lot for you.
HILGERS: It does, but it's like you feel the most alive like when I'm on stage and especially with this band, it's like very safe and yeah, it's like the best feeling in the world actually.
