Harry and The Potters - Lyrical Themes and Style

Lyrical Themes and Style

Harry and the Potters couple their rough-edged music with themed lyrics, which define the band as much as the costumes. The straight-forward but quirky presentation of adolescent concerns and direness in the simplest of worries gives the songs their easy likeability. They poke fun at awkward situations from the books. For example, in the song "The Human Hosepipe", they sing, "Maybe you shouldn't have brought up Cedric Diggory/ Because I'd rather not talk about your dead ex-boyfriends over coffee." Two other examples of the bands distinctive take on teenage angst are seen in the song "Save Ginny Weasley" where they sing, "Are you petrified of being petrified?" and the song "The Godfather." where the gothic or mock-morbid line "Why do I always think that I am going to die?" is sung to an up-beat tune.

For the Harry Potter fandom, Harry and the Potters refer to words and phrases in the books, including Hogwarts, Harry's Firebolt, Felix Felicis, the Flying Car, wizard chess, platform nine and three-quarters, The Burrow, the three-headed dog Fluffy, Mrs. Norris, the basilisk, The Marauder's Map, various spells and incantations, and the Invisibility Cloak.

Harry and the Potters with its strong persona or theme is as much a performance art project as it is a rock band. Musically, they sound much like other indie rock music with the exception that the band adheres to a novel conceit: the Harry Potter books will inspire the lyrics. As Joe said in a 2005 interview, "We try to take the themes from the books and amplify them." Their musical sound is described as "simple, catchy rock – think The White Stripes crossed with Raffi – where everyone sings along which is easy because in songs like 'Voldemort Can't Stop the Rock' the title is pretty much the only line." Another reviewer’s ear hears "a touch of the Ramones in their ultra simple lyrics."

The band is organized quite simply with Paul and Joe playing their songs in a simple basic guitar-synth-and-drums indie pop style and they sing in the semi-deadpan way; a review found the vocal delivery similar to that of They Might Be Giants. The raison d’être of the band is to put enough energy and spirit into their songs to make them fun.

The band is not musically polished. Paul has joked that, if they had known of the band’s popularity, they might have made "an effort to sing in tune. But it’s hard to anticipate that sort of thing when you’re just writing silly songs and recording them in your living room over a weekend.". While musicianship is not the strength of the band, Paul says that the fans "know we're not the best singers and keyboard players, but we're okay. And they think, well, I could do that, too. I think that’s really encouraging to people..." Paul sees the brothers as a "bridge between this mainstream phenomena of Harry Potter and the indie rock underground. Plus, we’re also pretty strong adherents to the DIY ideal." The two brothers promote this ideal of making music independently and have fused the legions of fans on to the DIY free-for-all of indie rock and punk music, albeit of the silly kind.

The Washington Post describes the brothers as having vast quantities of both passion and ability to engage an audience: the "combination of their happy, who-cares personalities and Harry Potter fanaticism has cast a spell over book-loving teens across the country." Paul said, "the band is neither geeky nor cool but 'geeky-cool'. I think the indie-rock community at the very least realizes we're taking a very DIY approach to this."