Upcoming Releases

Hanalei is the brainchild of Brian Moss (The Ghost, Great Apes, Olehole, Wunder Years) and the moniker has been a vehicle used to explore indie and folk-tinged soundscapes through a punk lens. The project has the flexibility to shift from full-blown band to a stripped-down solo endeavor, and each release tends to showcase a different manifestation. As of late, Brian's been committed to self-recording with a fairly minimalistic setup. This has led to 'Black Snow,' Hanalei's first new album in over 10 years which is due out on March 12th via A-F Records.

Moss about the new album:

"I keep pinching myself to make sure I’m alive. Have we all been unknowingly transported into some cruel alternate universe where what was once confined to imagination has become reality? As I write this, California is burning and a pandemic is ravaging the globe. Police are murdering innocent people of color at-will, domestic terrorism is being thinly veiled as patriotism, facts and logic are ignored, a cartoonish, malevolent blob is nearing totalitarian control, and love is lost. This can’t be real.

I began writing Black Snow roughly two years ago after finding out my wife was pregnant. The process served as a means of coping with the relentless anxiety and bouts of depression that polluted my expected joy. How could I bring a child into a world on the verge of collapse?

The record is a non-linear, fictional collage, set in the not-so-distant future, following the destruction of our climate and the subsequent disintegration of modern society. The songs are primarily narrated from varying first person perspectives: the last standing bristlecone pine, a virus unearthed by fracking (this one was written a year before Covid hit and obviously feels eerily relevant now), the collective voice of animals subjected to human wrath, an estranged lover in a drought-parched Northern Californian landscape, a post-apocalyptic traveler who unearths a working smartphone, the self-serving climate change denier, a father and son choosing optimism and action over apathy and surrender, and so forth. Consider this a warning. Fiction is finding its way from far-flung to here and now."