“Okay, Conor. You’re scaring me.”
That’s what Ryan Adams wrote after seeing Conor Oberst perform for the first time. Ryan went on for 900-something more words (some of it nonsense; some of it worth reading if you’re not feeling too cynical) about the experience of seeing Conor, then known both singularly and with his band as Bright Eyes, and hearing songs that made him regret all the time he’d wasted. Those words came to mind on May 30 after I attended the CD release show at the Columbus Theatre for Jack Rabbit Jones by Haunt The House.
My first time seeing Haunt The House, the name by which both Will Houlihan and his band are known, was on June 8, 2012 as the CD release show for Jonah Tolchin’s Criminal Man. I most strongly recall one song from Will’s set that night which I couldn’t quite grasp at first listen and which, without warning, became “House Of The Rising Sun” before veering off and out of reach again just as suddenly. I didn’t see him again until February 16, 2013, which is when I realized that he was someone I had to pay attention to and, more immediately, that I had a lot of work to do just to follow him on the bill that night. In April of that year, Haunt The House releasedRural Introspection Study Group, a record that made me wonder if I could possibly make something that good with just a guitar, a harmonica, and my voice.When we next shared a show just four months later, Will was already describing his next record: the characters; the stories; the themes; the accompanying visuals; a full band. A full band? I had no idea how the perfectly unadorned sound of Haunt The House, a sound I had by then rigidly defined in my mind, could bear the intrusion of another instrument or voice or anything else. I feared the worst.
Then I heard Will joined at a show a few months later by Amato Zinno on upright bass and Bessie Bessin on accordion and vocals, and I heard them play some of Will’s new songs. And I realized that was Haunt The House. Then I went to the Columbus that night in May and heard that trio turned into a five-piece band by Allysen Callery on vocals and Stephen Lloyd Law on mandolin, and I heard them play more of Will’s new songs. And I realized, no, that was Haunt The House. Then I drove home and listened to my newly acquired copy of Jack Rabbit Jones and recognized how far this was from Rural Introspection Study Group, how different the language and music was, and just how quickly Haunt The House had transformed itself.Okay, Will. You’re scaring me.