Greg Hoy & the Boys’ Drop “Demons At Night”

Music videos can serve several purposes for an artist, from marketing a new sound to rebelling against the standards set forth by the preceding generation of musicians to dominate the charts, but in the case of Greg Hoy & the Boys’ “Demons At Night,” a video is used as a means of advancing a narrative beyond the parameters of the studio environment – while also paying tribute to the gods of rock past. Merging the visual with the virtuosic aural elements that make the song such a stunner of a simple single, Greg Hoy once again delivers something entirely fresh for those in need of something straight-up and hard-hitting here, and to me, that’s something worth writing about this November.  

There are plenty of props in the music video for “Demons At Night,” but the feeling behind the lyrics is larger than life even without the campy elements. It’s perhaps indicative of the icy tone of the vocal harmonies that, even when an instrumental warmth is seeping through the backend of the mix, the bombast of the imagery finds itself locked in a jovial cycle with the soundtrack that even the most disciplined of listeners will find themselves getting immersed in – and, I should add, I say this having experienced it myself on more than a few occasions.  

The composition itself hints in a rather blunt fashion at a garage rock rawness I want to hear more of from Greg Hoy & the Boys, but it’s never so prominent in the big picture here that the more delicate angles of the vocal and production design overall get lost in translation. Aesthetical experimentation is the theme of this emerging generation of independent musicians, and provided this act stays on its present trajectory, I don’t see where even material as eclectic as “Demons At Night” wouldn’t be able to find a place in the hierarchy of smart, focused alternative rock.  

I will say that I noticed something rather poppy about the main harmony in this song as it unfolds to us in the chorus, but I don’t look at this element as a purely cosmetic feature that was included simply to magnify the easy-going feel of the lyricism. I think it genuinely accentuates the passion of the words and makes the music sound even more authentic than it already would have, and if this was the ultimate goal, I don’t see anything wrong with this kind of unconventionality making its way into the fold.  

There is a lot of really interesting and anti-mainstream content coming out of the international underground in 2022, but I do not believe that you’re likely to hear anything quite like the sound Greg Hoy & the Boys have created in the new single “Demons At Night,” nor the foundations of its video as they’re presented to us here. “Demons At Night” is a thoroughly engaging rocker of minimalistic ideals (compositionally speaking, that is), and while it’s tailored for more of a niche audience than the casual rock n’ roll consumer, it’s one of my new favorite tracks of the fall season in 2022 without a doubt.  

Mindy McCall