If you follow regional music and took a liking to the Shreveport band Super Water Sympathy in recent years, you have cause to smile.
The band is back for a Hopkins Icehouse show tonight, though the words Super Water Sympathy are nowhere to be found. Instead, the band's new name is on the proverbial marquee: Hydrogen Child.
That simpler name reflects a more direct, conscious approach from the quintet to refine its image and brand. Lead singer Ansley Rimmer said they needed a clean, strong name to go with their clean, strong sound.
"One of our biggest struggles as a band has been our band name," Rimmer admitted during a chat about what the band's been doing lately. It's a name people would often get wrong ("Super Water Symphony?"), so the band decided to change it.
As the singer explains it, Hydrogen Child members are also working on growing and improving their sound, having struggled with where they fit in in the indie pop rock realm.
That said, they've found tremendous success since starting in 2010, having spent 2013 on the road to the tune of about 200 days, touring all over. Their songs landed on MTV shows, and the band played the Vans Warped Tours in 2012 and 2013. They were a hot item.
"It's changed so much over the years," Rimmer said about their sound. They came up with the term "water pop" to describe their music, making up a genre because it was fun to say and caught on, said the vocalist, who studied musical theater in college and credits that experience with helping her perform on stage.
"We'd like to think that we have a sense of fluidity in our sound," Rimmer said about how the qualities in their music blend together and the water imagery that creeps into the lyrics without their even consciously putting it there.
Looking back, the lead singer sees a thread that connects their Super Water Sympathy albums to the present incarnation as a band preparing for an EP release soon. Rimmer said, "It's almost like three different bands, but it still has my vocals, and it kind of shares a similar vibe."
She's honest about the band's desire to cross from indie to mainstream, but in that sense, they're focusing on having a chorus and being catchy, she said, referring to a band like The Lumineers, who found that cross-over appeal.
"We want to make a solid career out of this," Rimmer said, noting she and her bandmates have a "weird cohesiveness" that works with their personalities and their music. She's joined in the band by Clyde Hargrove on guitar; Jason Mills on keyboard; her husband, Chris Rimmer, on bass; and Hali Kha on drums.
They get along well and laugh together, she said. "We're all very different, but we all share the right common qualities in our personality," Rimmer said.
After a busy 2013, the band focused this year on playing locally, as well as recording new material at the beginning of the year and now two more new songs for an anticipated five-song EP they aim to release in January. Playing the new songs in their live shows has inspired a positive reaction in the crowd, Ansley reported.
"We're going to continue to play regionally," she said about the 2015 plan, emphasizing how important the regional fan base is for a band. If a band can go somewhere five or six hours away and sell out a bar, they're doing well, she said. But they'd like to get out on tour with a bigger band.
In the interim, they're back in Texarkana tonight and ready to put on a fun, colorful show at Hopkins Icehouse. They also have a new song, the upbeat and catchy "Sirens," out on iTunes.
"Oh man, we've got fog machines, we've got lights and lasers, we've got bubbles. Also, if anyone shows up to the show with either face paint or body paint or bubbles, they get a free band surprise," Rimmer said about tonight's show.
Join the party and catch Hydrogen Child tonight.
(Cover is $5. Cascadian Mass opens. Show starts at 8:30 p.m. Hopkins Icehouse is at 301. E. Third St. For more information, call 870-774-3333.)