Kevin Bronson on October 20th, 2020

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For anybody who foamed over at the brash, boozy and brilliant indie-rock of the Henry Clay People, there’s a new handle on the tap: Near Beer.

Near Beer is the quartet formed by Joey Siara (The Henry Clay People and, later, Fakers) and longtime pal Jeremy Levy, who sought to capture, in their words, “the bratty power-pop anthems that would make their younger selves proud.” Legend is that Dan Long (Spiral Stairs, Film School and at one time the Henry Clay’s producer) joined up on the condition that the band call itself Near Beer. Drummer Brent Stranathan rounded out the lineup.

It’s too early to gauge Near Beer’s alcohol content, but the first single “The Alarmists” has every ounce of the acidity that the Henry Clay People had at their tartest. Destined to appear on a compilation for Democracy Now!, it’s the first single from a batch of recordings the quartet made a year ago with producer Ethan Kaufmann and a tease for an album of what Siara calls “a thirtysomething coming-of-age record, completed during the COVID cabin-fever months.”

Siara, for his part, is the ’90s suburban kid looking rancorously as where we’ve landed in 2020. He connects the dots by name-checking Wally George, the outlandish right-wing host of the tabloid cable TV program “Hot Seat,” which aired in SoCal from 1983 to ’92 (and is still in reruns today). “Don’t trust the man of the hour / Wally George in a fat suit flapping his mouth,” Siara speak-sings.

“I grew up seeing Wally George on Orange County public access — because they’d play these reruns of him before the punk music video show,” Siara says. “So I’d stay up super late as a junior high kid to watch the punk show and have to endure Wally George, which I guess is sort of where I started to see the dangers (and absurdity) of proto-Fox News shock-jock fascism. Anyhow … Ah, the O.C.”

||| Stream: “The Alarmists”