Hello Mary

Although they’ve only been together for a short time, New York City’s Hello Mary have already impressed many with their shrewd tenacity and keen ability to write dark, fuzz-filled anthems. They’ve found some fans in high places, earning praise from some legit indie rock powerhouses over the last year. Tanya Donnelly of Belly, Britta Phillips of Luna, and Julia Cummings of Sunflower Bean have all raved about the trio’s raw and powerful sound, with Cummings even dubbing them “the future of rock and roll.” She’s definitely on to something, as after listening to their debut album, Ginger, I’m convinced that the future of guitar-driven music is bright because bands like Hello Mary are carrying the torch. The group, which is made up of Helena Straight on guitar, Mikaela Oppenheimer on bass, and Stella Wave on drums, manage to put a fresh spin on the alternative rock of the 1990s, with songs that sound fierce and invigorating. 

We wanted to learn more about them, so we chatted recently via email about Ginger, how the band got their start, the secret to their already well-developed chemistry, and more:

How’d the three of you start playing together? What are each of your backgrounds as far as making music and playing in other bands? 

Helena and Mikaela originally met in middle school. At the time, Helena was taking vocal lessons and playing guitar at Brooklyn Music Factory, where she was in a band that was looking for a bassist. Mikaela had been playing bass for a few years in the middle school jazz band and joined BMF to complete Helena’s band. Their freshman years of high school they left BMF and started making music, just the two of them, under the name “Hello Mary.” They recorded a couple songs (early versions of “Ginger” and “A Letter”) in Helena’s attic on GarageBand and released them on Soundcloud. 

Inspired by her mother (a drummer and songwriter), Stella started taking drum lessons in her freshman year of high school, and started writing songs in her sophomore year, periodically releasing music on Bandcamp. She wrote songs, played drums and sang lead vocals in her first band, an alt. rock trio that she formed in her senior year of high school. 

In January of 2019, Hello Mary (only Helena and Mikaela at the time) and Stella were all asked to be a part of a show highlighting young female musicians. Stella declined because her band members at the time were all away at college, and more importantly weren’t female. Hello Mary declined because they didn’t have a drummer. The coordinator put Stella in touch with Hello Mary in hopes that they could make something work for the show. Helena, Mikaela and Stella had two practices before playing the show, and they decided to keep playing together afterwards. 

How’d you come up with the name Hello Mary? Is there a story behind it?

There’s no big story, unfortunately. Helena and Mikaela wanted to think of a band name, and started reciting phrases that had one word that started with “H” (for Helena) and one word that started with “M” (for Mikaela). Hello Mary had a ring to it, and it just stuck.

Photo by Olivia Wein

Your music sounds like it definitely draws influence from 90s alternative rock and grunge acts like L7 and Nirvana. How did you originally get exposed to/discover this era or music? Was it something you immediately connected with and enjoyed? 

Yeah, it does draw influences from a lot of the 90s stuff. Both Helena’s dad and Stella’s mom were touring drummers in the 90s, and always had good bands from that era playing around the house, which definitely planted a seed of some sort. Mikaela discovered a lot of the same music on her own once she started getting into bass. Since Helena and Mikaela started playing together so young, they would turn each other onto new music all the time, which mostly consisted of bands from that era. The 90s really birthed so many great bands, we think it’s safe to say we all connected with it pretty immediately. 

You’ve only been a band for a relatively short time, but your songs sound tight and the three of you seem to have great chemistry playing together. How were you able to develop that?

Thank you! Honestly, we’ve always felt really lucky about the chemistry we feel playing together. It does feel like something has always just clicked, but we have definitely gotten tighter the longer we’ve been a band. Practice does a lot for that sort of thing. But you know, it also really helps when you all have the same music taste, and also really respect one another as musicians and songwriters.

How do you typically approach songwriting? 

Pretty much all of the songs on Ginger were co-written by Helena and Mikaela. That includes chord changes, lyrics, rhythms- basically everything. The newer songs that we’ve written vary between being individually written by Helena, individually written by Stella, or written during practice by all three of us. However, everyone always writes their own part for their instrument. Sometimes, one of us will bring in a song that’s half finished, we’ll jam on it during practice and write a whole other section and a different person will add the rest of the lyrics. It really varies between songs. It seems like typically, the heavier, more energetic songs are ones that we write all together. 

Attila Anrather recorded and mixed your debut record, Ginger.  Tell us a little bit about what the experience of recording your first album was like.  Was it what you expected? How did you connect with Anrather and what was the process of recording with them like?
Stella was dating Attila at the time, and he had just started making a small DIY studio in his basement. She saw it as the perfect opportunity to record Hello Mary’s first set of songs without spending a fortune, and Helena and Mikaela agreed. It was really cool to hear our music recorded for the first time, where you could hear everything super clearly, instead of on a shitty voice memo. Obviously, there was an immediate connection with Attila since he was dating Stella. He had a pretty good idea of how we wanted to sound, so it made things go smoothly.

Going into recording Ginger, did you three have an idea of what you wanted the album to sound like? Or did it become more clear as you began recording? 

We knew we wanted it to sound pretty raw. We wanted everything to sound clear and pleasing to the ears, but we didn’t want it to sound noticeably different from how we sound live. Certain songs really developed though, with added harmonies and guitar layers last minute. 

I found “ A Letter” to be a particularly powerful song, as it appears to deal with the sudden loss of a loved one and the process of dealing with the emotional aftermath. What inspired that song? 

Helena wrote “A Letter” when she was 14 years old, a few months before Hello Mary reached its final form as a three piece. She came up with a chord progression first, and added lyrics afterwards. None of us are really sure what “A letter” is literally about, but the general sentiment is a person getting themselves out of the situation/lifestyle that they’ve trapped themselves in as an attempt to avoid the hardships of reality. The chorus of the song, “You won't know until you make it there / So unlock the door and move the wooden chair / I can't promise it won't be hell / But it's better than how you're living now” captures the feelings of uncertainty and discomfort that come with realizing that the way you’re living is destructive.

“Apple” was the lead single from the record. Tell us a little about that track. 

“Apple” was written by Helena and Mikaela in a car driving upstate. They really wanted to write a song, and just came up with the lyrics and lead guitar riff using only their voices in the backseat. When they got upstate, they immediately plugged into amps and wrote the rest of the song. “Apple” is essentially about feeling socially isolated in school, when it seems like everyone else has a ‘person’ except for you. 

I also really like the cover of the record, which appears to have two taxidermied rats fighting over a wishbone. It’s kind of like eerily symbolic. Was there any meaning behind that?  

The cover is an art piece by Stella’s dad that he made in a taxidermy class. It doesn’t have any meaning really, we just liked that it didn’t really remind us of any other album art we’d seen before, and it felt bold enough to stand on its own. 

Who would you say are some of your major musical influences? 

The Breeders, The Muffs, Sebadoh, Dinosaur Jr., Big Thief, Courtney Barnett, Nirvana, Built To Spill, Heatmiser, Jeff Buckley, Yo La Tengo, Swirlies, Sonic Youth, Pixies, My Bloody Valentine, Ty Segall, Pavement, Throwing Muses, Hum, PJ Harvey, and Nina Nastasia are some of our major influences, but the list goes on, really. 

Who are some of your current favorite New York City bands?

Pretty Sick, On Pink, Godcaster, Dirty Circuit (formerly The Employees), Bindy, Play Shoes, and Lip Critic are a few that we love, but there are a bunch of other great bands. 

What does the band have planned for 2021?

We’ve recorded 3 of our new songs to shop around to labels, but we really want to be able to record the rest of the new record whenever we’re able to scrape together the money. We also hope to play some outdoor summer shows, or maybe even go on a small tour if possible... and of course, we’ll just keep practicing and writing new songs. 

You can purchase Ginger via Bandcamp. The album is also available to stream on Spotify. Keep up with the band by liking them on Facebook and following them on Instagram.