Ears Wide Open: Hustle Roses

Kevin Bronson on February 21st, 2013

0

Points to Hustle Roses for truth in advertising – there’s plenty of hustle and bustle on her first mixtape, “Bitters.” A combination of dancefloor-friendly synth-pop, wonky interludes and sharp lyrics, “Bitters” is the brainchild of Olivia “Ollie” Stone, aka Hustle Roses, who carved out some space in our playlists as the singer-guitarist in the pop-rock quartet the Oohlas (the overlooked “Best Stop Pop” remains a highlight of 2006). As Hustle Roses, Stone teams up with producer Jesse Owen Austin (Like Clockwork) for a sound that embraces contemporary electro but doesn’t squeeze the guts out of it. The minute-long interlude “The Car Chase Will Always Be Televised” is tacit acknowledgement that Stone knows where the lowest common denominator is and won’t go there, and the edgy “NoHo” and the playful “Sleepwalker” reveal there’s more to Hustle Roses than fun and frolic.

* Updated: Since the aforementioned mixtape is, these years later, nowhere to be found, we’ve embedded the album it spawned, “Battleplanning.”

||| Stream: “Battleplanning”