LEWSBERG & THE KLITTENS spin off THE HOBKNOBS will release their first full-length record on own THK Records imprint in July 2026! "Helmets Off" can be described as an honest attempt at honesty.
Although all options are open at the moment of conception, the end result often remains bare.
Instruments come in when they are needed, but the songs apparently don't need that much at all.
Every word and every strum sounds like it's placed in exactly the right moment. Perhaps it is this bareness of the songs, that makes it feel as if The Hobknobs are speaking to the listener directly.
It is clear that they don't want anything to cloud this human interaction. An interaction that appears to come with a certain playfulness.
Yaël Dekker, whom you may also know as the singer of The Klittens, and Arie van Vliet, who used to spread his word through the band Lewsberg, were once described as loving misanthropes.
Listening to the album, this description seems rather accurate. A consoling song like "The Mind" sounds haunting.
Even words seem to have lost their meaning in "Dictionary". Songs that seem cheerful and naive at first appear to be pleadings on second listen.
And is "Enarmoured" a pro-war protest song? What war do they want to fight? Dekker and Van Vliet's voices seem to know each other well, in a way that magnifies the songs on "Helmets Off" beyond their deceptive simplicity.
Together with the minimal production by Jaap van der Velde, it makes that the album hits the sweet spot somewhere in the middle of 'instantly familiar' and 'no one else sounds quite like this'.
As Karina Gill from San Francisco-based group Cindy wrote about The Hobknobs: "To describe the music of The Hobknobs, use the word 'natural'.
And what you will mean is: fitted to itself; essentially, albeit politely, uninterested in whether or not you're looking.
You might think of early rock 'n' roll and you'll be thinking of its energetic nonchalance and honest economy minus any sentimentality.
Sonically and lyrically, the elements of the songs dovetail showing how they move but giving no temptation to take them apart.
The duo Yaël Dekker and Arie van Vliet have long admired each other's music but their collaboration here is not a closed conversation - at the same time colloquial and cerebral, we are invited in, if we can hang.
As a natural thing is self-possessed, The Hobknobs deftly maneuver so that we stand with them, hearing and seeing with them, and find that each song is a place to be."
