Teo Hernandez sings his heart out.
Wally
The Shop
Hamden
March 21, 2025
Teo Hernandez asked someone to cover his shift at Hamden’s Best Video, and it wasn’t his brother Lucas, even though they work together. Mild-mannered video store sweeties by day and New Haven indie rock stars by night, the Hernandez brothers had both accepted Saturday evening as their turn to embody the latter.
As daytime bled into night, longtime followers and soon-to-be fans alike ebbed into local recording studio The Shop to see the Hernandez brothers’ band Wally play their first full-band show in about a year.
Along with childhood friend Alex Blair on guitar and vocals, Pasquale Liuzzi on drums, Violet Reiss on bass, Declan Sheehy-Moss on saxophone, and Myles Keingstein on trumpet, Teo and Lucas Hernandez — on guitar and keys, respectively, and both gifted with heavenly vocals — delivered a clean set of surprises, delicious harmonies, and a lot of heart. It was a long time coming.
The band members were split across state lines, with some living in New York, so the full-band opportunity took a bit of planning and luck. “It just worked out” last weekend that everyone could be in the same city at the same time, Teo said.
The night's lineup.
At The Shop, blue carpet covered the floor, inviting every soul, wire, and piece of equipment into its plush ocean of fibers. “We vacuumed today,” Lucas told the crowd.
The room was illuminated by one lamp and a string of fairy lights twinkling along the walls, more than enough for the night’s purposes. The walls held band posters and flyers from well-loved local artists, and a metallic silver, spiky balloon watched from above as the audience danced, swayed, and laughed.
The band started off with a new song Teo wrote, “Alright,” anchoring whimsical vocal “ooos” and light video game-type sound effects with serious electric guitar riffs reminiscent of Midwest emo. It was a short song leading into the nostalgic, earnest “We Laughed,” thick brass solos adding an orchestral element that almost asked for strings on top.
Alex Blair was the songwriter behind the next song, “Rose,” a mellow piece led by experiments in vocal harmonies. Then the band dove headfirst into “Bandicoot,” a dramatic, drum-heavy song cutting back and forth between dirty, electric guitar-driven sections and smooth beats.
Wide smiles spread across the faces of band members and crowd alike during “Settled,” a wistful ballad combining early 2000s indie folk sensibilities with just enough toes dipped in other genres: rock, jazz, dreampop. Brass sailed through the melodies as the vocalists prayed, “I hope you miss me like I miss you,” lending the piece an effortless cohesion.
On “Hiding Behind the Moon,” a new sound floated over the music, a pretty tune, like birds calling in the desert, or the high-pitched whistles of a spaghetti western. The instruments came together in a romantic, reassuring 3‑beat waltz, never leaving each other’s side for too long. “Everything’s meant to be broken,” the band sang, “Everything’s meant to pass.”
The dreamy vibes and waltz structure continued in “St. Croix,” a saxophone- and trumpet-heavy piece with enough pockets of space for thick solos and three-part vocal harmonies that came in and out on satisfying buildups with timing so perfect you didn’t realize you had been waiting for them until they arrived.
“It’s a blessing to be alive, honestly,” Teo said to the crowd, in a moment of heartfelt honesty among the jokes at the core of his between-song banter. “Without a life, I wouldn’t know Lucas, my brother.” The crowd melted into a round of “aww”s.
“I’d say that’s pretty sweet,” he added as fans let their heads drop to the side in a collective warm gaze. His remarks had their own cinematic movie soundtrack: a stirring, hopeful progression of notes repeating over and over on the keys. It was only when Lucas, his face unmoved by the ooey gooeyness of Teo’s words, said “I don’t care, I’m going to play over it” that it became clear the keyboard’s steady melody was Lucas trying to drown out the mush. He stayed cool, no eye contact, straight into the band’s next song.
His stone cold act might have worked if he hadn’t already broken it two songs into the set, smiling despite himself as he told the crowd, “That’s Teo over there, that’s my brother. He wrote those songs. Crazy.” Teo leaned into the hype, muttering in the mic, “They call me Hercules on campus.”
One fan in attendance called out, “I thought it was The Hulk, no?” Teo giggled as he conceded, “Yeah, it was The Hulk, yeah.”
Wally finished their set with jazzy, funky crowd favorite “Mesmerism.” There were brief moments when the singers were so coordinated it felt polite; there were others when they let loose, growling into the mic in barely-controlled chaos. The piece got faster and faster, seeming to lose everything to the noise before bringing the band back to tight synchronization in an instant, one big musical wink.
Alex Blair strums a melody.
“Next up is HJP…J…H…” Lucas spelled out slowly, as a member from the next act half-encouraged, half-teased him from the crowd, saying “Yeah! That’s all of it! JL, PJ, J…”
The name was a makeshift one, denoting the initials of a few projects Frankensteined together for the night: PJPHJL stood for Pear Juice, Precious Human, and Jane Lai, three friends from New York playing each others’ songs in one folksy, love-filled set.
Pear Juice’s alter ego, visual artist Enne Goldstein, made the fantastical flyer for the show. In it, stars surround two otherworldly dogs as they look toward a red sun. Ominous letters in a gothic font spell out Wally, PJPHJL, and the third offering of the night: Connecticut indie band sundots, led by Drew Collins.
Earlier in the night, Lucas had introduced Collins in an improvised ditty, saying that “something smells” and that it was Collins. For further identification, Hernandez continued: “He’s the one in the really bad hat. Take it off.” His bandmates harmonized for emphasis. Collins didn’t listen, complaining the band was “supposed to be nice!”
Collins couldn’t have smelled too bad; Lucas ended up joining his band for the night’s set of slow, sweet tunes. It was just one example of the fact that, like a mycelial network whose fruiting bodies are just individual arrangements of a larger system, the local indie scene exists beyond its separate bands.
Without a life, it’s true, Teo would not know his brother Lucas. Without the specific life they’ve built for themselves, none of us would know Wally. On Saturday evening at The Shop, it took fans no time at all to agree with Teo that, for reasons like these, it’s a blessing to be alive.
Wally’s next show is back at The Shop on April 27. On April 17, Teo Hernandez will host a screening of Brokeback Mountain at Best Video.
Enne Goldstein's poster for the show.