OGRE let their freak flag fly on new single ‘Hair’

Portland, OR trio OGRE aren’t here to make things easy for you — and honestly, thank them for that.

Their latest single, Hair, is a gloriously contradictory beast: plodding and groovy, hypnotic and abrasive, the kind of track that locks you into a riff and then detonates sonic landmines around you while you’re helpless to do anything but nod along. If Devo and Gang of Four had a noise-rock lovechild raised on Motown basslines and krautrock, this would be it.

What makes Hair a particularly exciting moment in the OGRE story is the emergence of Grace as a full-fledged vocal force. Her delivery is cool, militant, totally unperturbed — even as the music around her is going wonderfully haywire. “Early on, Nils and I were the main vocalists, but turning it over to Grace on this track opens up thrilling new dimensions,” says Ace. Grace, for her part, is characteristically laid back about the whole thing: “I’m like the George Harrison of the band.”

The origin story is equally endearing. The track was written just one week before the band hit the studio — a spontaneous burst of scattershot creativity sparked after Grace finished beauty school, which she’d been attending throughout the recording of their album Bryan. As for the subject matter? “It’s about the biological relevance of hair growing on heads and crotches — it kind of came out gross,” she laughs. Naturally.

But beneath the tongue-in-cheek weirdness, there’s some serious musicianship at play. Hair spotlights OGRE’s signature two-bass attack in full force, with Grace holding down a deep, dub-inflected pocket while Ace goes full chaos mode on top. “Grace really set Ace free,” Nils explains. “He can get experimental with noise while she lays down the foundation.” The result is a track that’s as tight as it is unhinged — and that tension is exactly what makes it work.

Hair is out now digitally via CorpoRAT Records.