“I never wanted to be what you cannot be” – Closing lines on Gemini.

The summer of 2016 was pivotal for me. I’d just ended my first year as a bilingual teacher and the road ahead wasn’t clear. I took an on the spot decision to drive from San Diego to San Francisco, alone, in July. An old rickety iPod that managed to last 11 (!!!!) years gave me the best of memories of getting lost in San Francisco, ending up in a bad neighbourhood in Orange County, and an overheated rental outside Salinas.

The trip wasn’t supposed to be all the way to San Francisco. My final destination was instead Monterey, but the day I was supposed to saunter around town felt weird. I knew I had to push myself and get to San Francisco, even for a couple of hours. Stopped at Half Moon Bay for some refreshments and while having a snack on the parking lot near Dad’s Luncheonette, a car with young couple was idling about. I have no idea what station they were listening to, perhaps it was their MP3 player, but the sunshiney, bright song they blasted from their speakers was beautiful. The vocals, half-whispered and forlorn, made for a poignant contrast.

The journey ahead was weird, as any trip to San Francisco should, but that’s a story for another time. That song kept haunting me for a long while. I had no cell data for shazam, and eventually, the song just became a lost memory of a trip I’ll cherish forever.

Cue 2020. Teaching via Zoom was a real challenge on my mental wellbeing. Writing was harder than ever, and the only real place of solace was finding new music every day. Genre didn’t matter, I just needed to move forward, to avoid being a rusted wheel, like the one described by Silversun Pickups.

One Saturday in 2021 finally brought an answer. The YouTube algorithm was pushing new stuff my way, and then, lo and behold, that moment at the parking lot in Half Moon Bay came back. The wall of trees, the farmer’s market, the time-ravaged facade of Dad’s Luncheonette. It all came back. The sad vocals, the almost lo fi effects. The band was Hoops, the song was ‘Gemini’. For the next six months, that song was a lifesaver. Any time I felt overwhelmed, it was a soothing balm.

Once things got back into “normal”, I bought their EP and Routines, their debut LP, on a Bandcamp Friday. By then, the band was long dissolved. Drew Auscherman had announced back in 2020 that Hoops was no more, and everyone had gone to other projects like Wishy and Playland.

Routines is a great album, no doubt about that, and I’ll eventually write about it. But their EP was a revelation. Five songs, sixteen minutes. ‘Cool 2’starts with a dreamy riff that intertwines with a taut urgency. Time is running out, we’re not young forever, and all the social events we missed come back to haunt us when we are older.

The change of pace with ‘Yeah’ is magnificent. Slow paced, meditative, a confession that might have no reply. It matters not, catharsis eventually comes, and it’s a shame the extra solo added on the live performances of the track doesn’t make it to this cut. Still, a fantastic song.

At a first glance, ‘Going Strong’ felt like the lesser of the bunch. Far from the ambiance provided by ‘Cool 2’ and ‘Yeah’, it feels out of place until the solo kicks in, adding a new lawyer to the verse. A happier -if such thing exists here- track that rewards patience.

‘Going Strong’ leads into what became my fave track: ‘Give it time’. If you’d ask me to select only one song by Hoops as an introduction, I’d go for ‘Give it time’. The earnest lyrics, the change of pace from pensative to reminiscent, and again, a beautiful, extended solo that never bothers for speed, just a naked emotion that resonates, lingering as perfume that is no longer manufactured but you can still smell by memory.

And then, ‘Gemini’. I will never experience a trip to California like the one I took in 2016. I will never listen to ‘Gemini’ for the first time either. The lyrics, spectral and undecipherable, delivered in half-falsetto, cascading into oblivion every time the chorus “and even in my time I’m sure that I’m back living on my own, on my own” pierces through memories, good or bad, but memories still fresh, at least for you.

Life moves on. Bands reunite, then break up. So is the nature of the beast. Their swansong, Halo, remains unreleased, and the glimpses offered leave a big “what if” behind. For a small fraction of their young lives, Hoops delivered a rare outing of perfect songs. This EP is a faded Polaroid, splotches and all, where the gaps on the image is filled with memories you can relive when you concentrate hard enough.

—Sam J. Valdés López