Southern California-based trio Rec Hall, made up of John Barry (vocals, guitar), Lance Meliota (drums), and Ben Tyrell (guitar, bass) burst onto the scene in 2021 with breakout single “She Doesn’t Get It.” The song, over the next two years, slowly but organically gained traction, now accumulating over 20 million streams, and led to the group signing with Arista Recordings in 2023.
Individually, Meliota appears to be the quiet one in practice but displays the most understated moments of levity. Tyrell is the most analytical. Barry, as the frontman, is the clearest choice for band ambassador. As a unit, they are as loose and maturely immature as you’d expect from a group of three earlyish-20’s California boys signed to a major label.
They just wrapped their second leg of tour opening for fellow Arista act Beach Weather. Their debut EP Localism, featuring “She Doesn’t Get It,” dropped this past December, and their latest single, “How Long,” is out now.
Examining the process of Beach Weather has allowed the band to begin to prepare for their own headline experiences to come. “It’s the duality of sounding good versus performing well,” said Meliota. “You’re putting on a show, at the end of the day. For me, it’s the amount of fun I’m having onstage. It directly correlates to how well I play and, I think, how fun I am to look at play. If I’m all in my head and making these subtle mistakes, I just won’t have fun. But, if we’re all feeding off each other’s energy… everyone else has more fun watching, and it sounds better.”
“Our best shows of the first leg were from really great crowds,” Barry added. “We fed off their energy and did more onstage. We also had shows with… not the best crowd. That was so different and out of our control. We realized we can’t be relying on the crowd to give us this energy every night, we have to be internally supplying our energy.”
Rec Hall’s music is a mixture of the contemporary Southern Cali indie pop-rock sound of Wallows and almost monday with the more classic, post-punk/Brit-rock influence of The Strokes, The Clash, and Interpol. The music is lively, respectfully edgy, and well sung/structured. The verses of “She Doesn’t Get It” are as instantly hooky as something out of a car commercial, while the song overall is the best case for the band as a true west coast act.
“If You Run,” featuring more of an ambitious arrangement and vocal performance, is punchier with a more subdued melodic groove. “Pontiac” begins with a more retro, Beatles-like sound before shifting towards the indie rock sound of their other tunes.
Their EP Localism widens its scope to the idea of the term of the same name, defined as a preference, and perhaps a possessiveness, of ones living environment. The project saw them dissect, question, and cherish the fabric of their home life, diving into both the beauty and ugliness of the culture. Surfing, which Barry and Meliota confirm as being around 95% isolated thought and 5% action, is somewhat of a sacred activity… a sort of mental reset for locals.
“Localism is, in one sense, specific to the surf culture, but if you abstract it away from that and think of it as an attitude of preference towards one’s local area… when you get to a certain age, you just want to be out of there,” said Tyrell. “I was feeling sour about being in this bubble… then going on tour and returning, it gives you a new perspective.”
Rec Hall
“The ugly are the gatekeepy parts about where we live,” added Barry. “It comes from a place of protection, but also a place of, ‘I want to experience this, but not with others.’ That’s the duality of it. It’s like ‘Pick up your trash, but also… just don’t come.’”
Their latest single “How Long,” out now with an accompanying DIY music video from the road, sees the band needing to find ways to process being away from home as extensive travel has quickly become a necessary part of the job. Lamenting under a more pulsating vocal approach and instrumental meant for a dancehall than their typical alternative rock fare, the trio explore a sensitive topic while pushing their sound forward.
“It was more of the anticipation of that feeling,” said Barry, explaining how the song was written and developed before they had even hit the road for the first time. “The anxiety. Instead of writing the song like, ‘How’s it gonna be?,’ we wrote it as, ‘How long until we get home?’” Unlike “If You Run,” which took upwards of two years to finalize, “How Long” took two days. They credit raw emotion for the quick turnaround.
“You never know how much the subconscious plays,” added Tyrell. “So, maybe I really was writing it thinking about tour… but for me, when I was writing it, I didn’t realize that that’s what I was writing about. Then later, it became that for me.”
Making music on the road, specifically under the guise of Beach Weather while in close quarters, has been on the agenda. An album will come at some point, though plans and ideas for what that project will look like are still to be determined. “There’s no wish list, it’s more of an emotional and psychological idea of how I want to relate to the songs we put on it,” said Tyrell. “I want all of it, or as much of it as possible, to feel like us… unfiltered. Something bold, different, and new.”
“I’ve also been really open to not committing yourself to one thing,” he continued. “What might have been our primary influence on something we were writing two years ago, we might not think about at all anymore. Now, we might be drawing from a completely different palette.”
“What I can definitively say about it right now is that I just want to proud of it,” added Meliota. “Whatever ends up on there, I know it’s going to be what we want.” Barry closed the book on it, saying: “I think we all know exactly what we want to sound like, we just have to find out how to make that sound. The end goal of this album is to carry out the vision that we share.”
Stream Localism and “How Long”:
