Ears Wide Open: Hank May

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Hank May

Three fun facts about Hank May:

1) As a younger lad, he appeared in Silversun Pickups’ video for “Lazy Eye.” (Bless 2006.)

2) Back in his native Los Angeles after many years living in New York, he’s linking up with Dangerbird Records, SSPU’s original home.

3) The “NBC” in his debut single is an acronym for … NickelBack Creed?

Suffice to say it’s a song that has layers. Outwardly spry and feel-good, “NBC” — the lead song on his album “One More Taste of the Good Stuff,” out Oct. 15 — is about the false promise and dark side of ’90s alternative rock.

“‘NBC’ is an elegy for the music of my childhood, specifically ’90s alternative rock,” May explains. “I was inspired by YouTube comment sections and my own turbulent marriage to the guitar.”

With the ’90s having come back round either as nostalgia or as a reference point for new artists, May reminds that the era was rife with peril — alt-rock spaces were not safe spaces, and in “NBC” he specifically cites the train wreck that was the Woodstock ’99 festival.

“The Woodstock ’99 concert footage online shows a pretty horrid scene playing out in the audience,” May says. “Sexual violence was a huge problem in the crowd at that festival, and it’s unacceptable that this ‘boys will be boys’ attitude is still so pervasive in settings like this.”

||| Stream: “NBC”