Will Hoge – Tiny Little Movies
Thirty Tigers – 26 June 2020
Since 2006, the East Nashville-based Will Hoge has released a new album every two years at the most, this being his twelfth and following on from 2018’s My American Dream. Recorded live with guitarist Thom Donovan, drummer Allen Jones and bassist Christopher Griffiths, it’s a primarily musically upbeat affair with ringing guitar strums and snare drum energy. It gets off to a cracking start with the drawlingly sung Midway Motel, a life’s losers microcosm number where “there’s a bible and a telephone/And a tv that keeps flashing off and on” and “Everybody’s got a story they’re trying to tell”. Then a chugging guitar riff leads into the tougher, rockier drive of The Overthrow with its politically charged lyrics (“TV preacher with a fat lip…I can see thru you/Like a cheap sheet of glass/Sell a promise to a poor man/Steal it back so fast“) and which, for trivia freaks, features backing vocals by David Axelrod who wrote and arranged the classic Mass In F Minor for The Electric Prunes. It’s reasonable to assume that the line “Darth Vader with a spray tan” refers to Trump.
Built upon a repeated fractured drum pattern and with snarly electric guitar, Maybe This Is Ok is more personal as, despite setbacks, he sings about “Learning good things just don’t disappear“, but then the soundscape shifts for the brilliantly titled acoustic strum and piano accompanied Even the River Runs Out of This Town, one of those love means letting go numbers, about putting another’s future before your own desires (“Part of me hates to see you leaving/But the bigger part’s believing it’s what you had to do/You can’t burn bright in a town this dark/Can’t hitch your wishes to a one horse star“).
The tempo remains in check for My Worst, a slow and bluesily soulful co-write with Dan Baird that features Michael Webb on minimal organ for a song which, as the title suggests, looks inward as, gospel-style backing vocals rising from Kendra Chantelle and
Hollie Hammel and electric guitar pitching up a solo, he sings “I’m breaking us and blaming you” and how “When it comes to you…I always seem to do my worst”.
It’s back to a rockier punch (with an opening hint of The Beatles perhaps) for That’s How You Lose Her that unfolds as a Pettyesque slice of stadium rock about just letting someone walk out of your life only to eventually realise what you lost. On the other hand, Is This All That You Wanted Me For? he’s the one feeling shortchanged in a relationship that’s run its course (“ I’m standing here holding onto nothing/While you just smiled and walked away/Like I’m just some casual acquaintance/That you just met somewhere on the way“).
So, yes, he’s not pushing any thematic envelopes here, but he couches these familiar feelings in solid musical settings, whether that’s the ragged Southern blues rock n roll of the political snarl Con Man Blues, the heartland swagger of The Curse (“Maybe you’re the one to break the curse … cause I’m better than you found me”) or the dreamier dusty sway that is the redemptive The Likes of You.
It ends with the Southern country-soul All The Pretty Horses and how, when “the locks are all broken/And you’re down to only hoping/Maybe you can make it/To the sunrise if it comes” and you realise “the Mona Lisa/Was just another rich man’s daughter/That ended up with nothin’ but /A broken-down smile“, there’s hard-won wisdom in the advice “ Don’t listen to the voices/’cause you know just what the choice is/It’s time to wave goodbye to all the pretty horses” and move on. Not as political as his previous work perhaps, but in addressing love, love and relationships, these little movies still have a firm grasp of the big picture.
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