Western Cum

Albumbeschreibung

Though probably best known for his time-bending psychedelic rock band Wand, Cory Hanson's output has been storied and wide ranging. His first two albums as a solo artist set him up on what looked like a mellower trajectory, with 2021's Pale Horse Rider being especially subdued even when it glistened at the edges with sparkles of feedback or inserted experimental moments in among its loner folk atmospheres. Hanson's third solo outing, Western Cum, demolishes any expectations fans of Pale Horse Rider may have had for another album of similarly gentle Americana. Straight out of the gate, Hanson and his backing band (made up of brother Casey Hanson on bass and Evan Backer on drums) unleash a barrage of blasting rock energy on opening track "Wings." The song's layers of harmonizing guitars are melodic, overdriven, and shift into new segments of the arrangement without notice. One part stomping Southern classic rock, one part power pop-leaning '90s alternative, and with a prog-like tendency to change directions, the song is bizarre and catchy at once. "Housefly" is much the same, with a huge, nearly obnoxious riff that gives way to sweetly sung verses and a midsection of guitar heroics played with technical perfection. Western Cum moves from loud and heavy rocking into outright weirdness at times. After greasy guitar leads and a chorus that sounds like early Radiohead, "Horsebait Sabotage" locks into a dissonant, building pulsation that eventually breaks into cloudy ambience. "Persuasion Architecture" melts in and out of overblown punk thrashing and soft, dreamy-eyed country, with haunting swells of pedal steel from Pale Horse Rider contributor Tyler Nuffer. The more than ten-minute-long "Driving Through Heaven" puts all of the album's various approaches through a spin cycle, going somewhere different every several seconds and never too far away from its next angular guitar hook, surrealistic lyric, or dynamic upheaval. The earnest acoustic guitars and soft rock backing harmonies of "Twins" or the Neil Young-ish shamble of "Ghost Ship" are moments when Hanson takes a breath, but for the most part he's in a wild and theatrical mode on Western Cum. The overpowering guitars and relentlessly complex song structures that make up the majority of the album feel more like the sounds Hanson makes with Wand than something unique to his solo iteration, but he shares some new windows into his wonderfully mystifying psyche all the same.

© Fred Thomas /TiVo