Prince Daddy & The Hyena – Self-Titled | Album Review
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Since 2018 Prince Daddy & The Hyena has been a massively influential band in my life. I remember hearing “I Wish I Could ctrl+alt+del My Life” come on the playlist at my café job and RUN-ning to the office to see who was singing it. “Prince Daddy & The Hyena,” I said to myself. “That’s a weird name, I sure hope I don’t form some kind of intense, parasocially emotional connection to this band that lasts for years, maybe even the rest of my life.”
But I did.
I’ve learned a lot of lessons both as a musician and writer from PDaddy. This band taught me it’s okay to make incredibly specific (potentially impenetrable) references to the movies and tv shows you relate all your feelings to. They helped me affirm that guitar rock is still awesome, and perhaps most importantly, they taught me not to be afraid to indulge in oversharing my feelings and mistakes with anyone who might be willing to listen. So really you only have them to thank for this extra-long intro.
The moment that crystallized the pandemic as reality for me came on March 13th, 2020. My partner and I were sitting in the cafeteria of Halifax’s Queen Elizabeth II hospital, waiting for my mom to get out of dental surgery, when the tweets came in. “Tour’s canceled,” I imagine they said. I don’t know, I’m not going to scroll back through two full years worth of tweets. I've already put off proofreading this article long enough. My partner was living in Montreal and we had plans to see Prince Daddy there and in Toronto and sing along to *every* word from Cosmic Thrill Seekers, which was the style at the time. We had the tickets. My flight was booked. There was so much uncertainty back then, and rather than cancel my flight and risk not seeing her again until god knows when I kept my ticket and spent three months in an experimental cohabitation that never would have happened without PDaddy. Cosmic Thrill Seekers being one of my top 5 all-time favourite albums to run to meant they carried me through a lot of days during that time, and I’m so grateful for that. It’s still one of my favourite memories of the pandemic?
And while that relationship eventually ended, Prince Daddy & The Hyena persists.
I was so nervous in the weeks before Cosmic Thrill Seekers was released. How could it possibly live up to the perfection of PDaddy’s first LP, I Thought You Didn’t Even Like Leaving. Considering the space CTS takes up in my heart, it feels silly now to have ever felt that way. So I’m not sure why I did it again in the lead up to this brand new, self-titled LP. Maybe I keep my hopes low to avoid being let down. Maybe I just tend to anticipate the worst in everything.
But hey, I learned it from the best.
Prince Daddy & The Hyena (the album) is a perfect representation of everything Prince Daddy & The Hyena (the band) have spent the past six years building on. For how honest and raw lyricist Kory Gregory has been since day one, he always finds new ways of removing barriers with each release. CTS has less of the “keep the world at arm's length” snarky humor that appears so often throughout Leaving, and with this self-titled, he allows us to hear his actual singing voice more regularly. It’s a subtle softening of boundaries across a body of work that’s incredibly impressive.
PDaddy has always been a band with firm control over their vast dynamic range, and here they’ve honed it to a sharp edge. While tracks like “A Random Exercise in Impernance,” “Shoelaces,” and “Keep up That Talk” smother you with a familiar frantic energy, moments such as “Something Special” and “Discount Assisted Living” are welcome opportunities to breathe. They’ll also break your fucking heart.
The highlight track, for me, has to be “Hollow As You Figured.” Opening quietly with an unsettling guitar riff that sets the stage for one of Gregory’s deeper explorations of the dark places that isolation can bring us to—eventually combusting into the heaviest riffs of the album and possibly PDaddy’s catalogue.
As a 30-something Canadian, it’s hard not to compare it to Sum41’s third album Chuck and the more mature themes and musical style the band explored within. I won’t, but just know that if I did, it would be with all the love in my heart.
Probably the most impressive feat of the album is “Black Mold.” The message I sent to my band’s group chat upon opening my advance SoundCloud streaming link was, “new prince daddy has a fucking nine-minute song on it.” I know what you’re thinking, and yes, while I didn’t let anybody hear the album before it came out, I did brag to two of my closest friends that I would get to listen to it early because I am a “professional.” As the emotional climax of the record, we have our hands held as we’re taken on a tour of various traumas from the singer’s past, a familiar recurring theme for longtime listeners. What blows me away is that there are no wasted moments in this song. Nine minutes is a LONG time, but it never feels like that here. It’s an extension of PDaddy’s ability to weave multiple pieces together as seen on Leaving and CTS, and a testament to their more operatic tendencies.
Prince Daddy & The Hyena the band proved my doubts about Prince Daddy & The Hyena the album wrong just like they did with Cosmic Thrill Seekers: You can improve on perfection.
Cailen Alcorn Pygott is a writer, musician, and general sadsack from Halifax, Nova Scotia. He’ll tell you even more about his anxieties on his band No, It’s Fine.’s album I Promise. Tell him how brave you think that is on Twitter @noitsfinereally and on Instagram @_no_its_fine_.
His top five albums to run to of all time are:
Mom Jeans - Sweet Tooth
Gregory Pepper And His Problems - I Know Now Why You Cry
Prince Daddy & The Hyena - Cosmic Thrill Seekers
Bowling For Soup - The Hangover You Didn’t Deserve
Charly Bliss - Guppy
Honorable mention: Dollar Signs - This Will Haunt Me
