The O'My's
The O'My's have been a band for more than a decade, shuffling through many members and releasing a fair amount of music in the process. But the experimental Chicago soul duo would prefer you view Tomorrow, their spacey and sensual new album, as their true starting point. "I finally feel comfortable giving this to somebody and saying, 'This is what we do,'" says singer-guitarist Maceo Haymes, 29, who founded the group in 2008 with keyboardist Nick Hennessey, 28. "If you can't get it now, then you're probably never going to."
The O'My's' serene and sticky sound is built around Haymes' falsetto vocals, which have drawn comparisons to everyone from Curtis Mayfield to TV On The Radio's Tunde Adebimpe, and Hennessey's tender keyboard/synth melodies. On Tomorrow, they go deeper than ever into jazz, hip-hop and soul, with help from fellow Windy City natives including Chance the Rapper, Saba and Nico Segal (a.k.a. Donnie Trumpet).
As those guest credits suggest, the O'My's have strong roots in Chicago's music scene. They've shared stages with many of the city's most adventurous hip-hop-adjacent acts, including Chance, Segal, Vic Mensa and Carter Lang (the bassist and producer who worked on the majority of SZA's Ctrl). But as several of their peers have skyrocketed to national recognition in recent years, Haymes and Hennessey were still working things out. They took side jobs at a bar to make ends meet when they weren't playing small clubs; after their 2015 EP Keeping the Faith, which veered from urgent Otis Redding-style soul to wild psychedelia, they struggled to land on a defining sound to anchor their future.
"I definitely feel a ton more sane now with the album out," Haymes says. The soft-spoken, contemplative singer sits across from Hennessey — who wields a mean mustache, a grizzled voice and a dry sense of humor — in the modest Rogers Park apartment where they wrote most of their new album. A vinyl copy of Afro-Cuban jazz percussionist Mongo Santamaria's 1972 LP Up From The Roots spins nearby as Haymes talks about the relief he felt upon the album's completion. "The day it was sent out to get mastered, I was waiting for the train and my sister called me. I hadn't told her anything. She's like, 'Wow, you sound really happy. What's going on?'" He laughs. "I was like, 'It's done. It's finally out of our hands!'
The O'My's have been a band for more than a decade, shuffling through many members and releasing a fair amount of music in the process. But the experimental Chicago soul duo would prefer you view Tomorrow, their spacey and sensual new album, as their true starting point. "I finally feel comfortable giving this to somebody and saying, 'This is what we do,'" says singer-guitarist Maceo Haymes, 29, who founded the group in 2008 with keyboardist Nick Hennessey, 28. "If you can't get it now, then you're probably never going to."
The O'My's' serene and sticky sound is built around Haymes' falsetto vocals, which have drawn comparisons to everyone from Curtis Mayfield to TV On The Radio's Tunde Adebimpe, and Hennessey's tender keyboard/synth melodies. On Tomorrow, they go deeper than ever into jazz, hip-hop and soul, with help from fellow Windy City natives including Chance the Rapper, Saba and Nico Segal (a.k.a. Donnie Trumpet).
As those guest credits suggest, the O'My's have strong roots in Chicago's music scene. They've shared stages with many of the city's most adventurous hip-hop-adjacent acts, including Chance, Segal, Vic Mensa and Carter Lang (the bassist and producer who worked on the majority of SZA's Ctrl). But as several of their peers have skyrocketed to national recognition in recent years, Haymes and Hennessey were still working things out. They took side jobs at a bar to make ends meet when they weren't playing small clubs; after their 2015 EP Keeping the Faith, which veered from urgent Otis Redding-style soul to wild psychedelia, they struggled to land on a defining sound to anchor their future.
"I definitely feel a ton more sane now with the album out," Haymes says. The soft-spoken, contemplative singer sits across from Hennessey — who wields a mean mustache, a grizzled voice and a dry sense of humor — in the modest Rogers Park apartment where they wrote most of their new album. A vinyl copy of Afro-Cuban jazz percussionist Mongo Santamaria's 1972 LP Up From The Roots spins nearby as Haymes talks about the relief he felt upon the album's completion. "The day it was sent out to get mastered, I was waiting for the train and my sister called me. I hadn't told her anything. She's like, 'Wow, you sound really happy. What's going on?'" He laughs. "I was like, 'It's done. It's finally out of our hands!'
