**FUCKLEBERRY HINN | NEITHER/NOR | WONDERFUL & STRANGE RECORDS | SEPT. 1, 2023**

Bio:

The colorful washes of My Bloody Valentine, the unflinching sensitivity of Elliott Smith, and the unimpeachable idealism of Fugazi mix with innocent wonder on the sprawling 22-track double-album debut by Norway’s Fuckleberry Hinn.

The DIY ethos of the Elephant 6 Collective is a production influence that underpins the commanding urgency heard on the more than half-dozen singles that the group has released to date.

Now, the eyebrow-raising wordplay of the band’s name extends to the title of Fuckleberry Hinn’s long-awaited album Neither/Nor (Sept. 1, Wonderful & Strange Records), a punny tribute to Smith’s modern classic Either/Or, a touchstone album for Fuckleberry Hinn’s founding core pair of Øysteins: Øystein Ulvund and Øystein Megård.

“We started out as a duo in late 2019, with no real intentions of starting a band,” Megård says. “After we somehow ended up getting booked to play a gig without really being a group yet, we gathered a troupe and became one.”

In addition to Megård (who also performs in The Sideways and The High Water Marks) and Ulvund, Fuckleberry Hinn now includes Tord Nyheim Hovde (Lâche) on Bass, Ole Jørgen Kristensen (earth moon transit) on Guitar, and Hallvard Løberg Näsvall (This Daze, Slåppy) on Drums.

Fuckleberry Hinn’s debut album displays a knack for many different styles of song, which was decidedly not by design.

“The album varies from quiet singer-songwriter tunes to noisy punk songs,” Megård explains. “There’s even a sea shanty.

“We have never had any predetermined course of action. We thought Fuckleberry Hinn would be a great name for a punk band when we came up with it years before we even started making music together.

“But our first song was so mellow and not punk that we quickly decided we would just make whatever we felt like.”

“Nobody,” the final single prior to the release of Neither/Nor is an anthem, and perhaps the album’s most memorable track.

“Am I depressed or just lazy

Is my mind playing tricks

Or am I going crazy

And now I’m rambling”

Megård taps into human frailties and failings in universal ways to great effect on this song. It’s not surprising to find out that it came to him at a time when we are all vulnerable.

“‘Nobody’ started out as a dream. It really happens, it’s not just a thing McCartney claims! I woke up having dreamt a song, and after scrambling around, I managed to make a kind-of comprehensible sketch of the chorus. It took some time later to decode the recording I made on my phone.”

“Nobody will know, nobody will understand”

That’s how the chorus that arrived that night goes. It’s a sentiment that everyone has felt at one time or another, and yet somehow, the finished song makes understanding a lot easier.

Neither/Nor is the 22-track double-album debut by Norway’s Fuckleberry Hinn, out Sept. 1, 2023 on Wonderful & Strange Records. The band’s latest single “Nobody” arrives on Aug. 14.