Wooden Overcoat’s “Home” began with Brant Hajek thinking about something beautiful that couldn’t last. Wrapped in tape echo, reverb, fuzz and layered harmonies, the song turns that slow disappearance into a hazy collision of psychedelic pop, garage rock and shoegaze.
“Home” is out now as part of Wooden Overcoat’s four-song debut EP ‘Hello Sunbeam’. It’s the first official introduction to the Portland project, which Hajek began after returning to music during the isolation of 2020.
“When I wrote ‘Home’, it kind of poured out of me, and I think I’m still interpreting it,” Hajek says. “But to me, it’s about acknowledging something beautiful, even if it can’t last.”
He describes two people who seem naturally paired but gradually begin to decompose and self-destruct. The song ultimately comes back to appreciating what exists in the present, including the beauty that can remain visible while something is burning out.
The music gives that idea an appropriately blurred atmosphere.
Wooden Overcoat combines the sun-soaked character of 1960s garage rock with 1990s shoegaze and modern psychedelic indie. Tape echo and reverb wash across the recording, while fuzz, layered harmonies and Hajek’s intimate vocal keep “Home” floating somewhere between dream pop and garage psych.
The project itself came together almost accidentally.
Hajek returned to songs he had written in his late teens and initially treated the process as an exercise in learning self-production. Working from a rented basement, he became increasingly absorbed in soundscapes, recording equipment and spontaneous experimentation, often abandoning whatever he had planned for a session when a more interesting idea appeared.
He eventually performed every instrument on the studio recordings himself, preserving the DIY character that had defined Wooden Overcoat from the beginning. Hajek also wrote, recorded, mixed and mastered the EP, with the sessions taking place in a house in Portland.
Wooden Overcoat has since expanded beyond its one-person studio origins. Hajek handles guitar and lead vocals in the live band, joined by Dillon Glusker on bass, Mac on guitar and Brian Levin on drums and backing vocals.
Even the band’s name fits the atmosphere. “Wooden overcoat” is an old Americana euphemism for a coffin, giving the project’s dreamy psychedelic exterior a streak of gallows humour.
“Home” also comes with a video created by Italian multi-arts filmmaker Francesca Bonci, whose previous work includes collaborations connected to The Dandy Warhols, Pete International Airport, Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell, Tombstones In Their Eyes, Federale, The Quality of Mercury and Philip Parfitt.
Across ‘Hello Sunbeam’, Hajek stretches that home-recorded experimentation into four songs, beginning with “Home” before moving through “Finally Arrived,” “Heaven Right Now” and “I Knew You Would.”
It all starts with a song about knowing something wonderful might disappear and deciding that makes it even more important to appreciate while it’s here.
TRACK LISTING:
- Home
- Finally Arrived
- Heaven Right Now
- I Knew You Would