Micah P Hinson – … And The Pioneer Saboteurs

This fourth album of original material from Earlies fellow-traveller Micah P Hinson is a grave, sometimes stern and serious, but frequently beautiful piece of work.

Hinson’s voice, as ever, is one of the album’s key features. At its most deep, sombre and true – as on ‘Sweetness’, ‘Seven Horses Seen’, ‘My God, My God’ and ‘That Hero Will Never Hang’ – it is an instrument of equal parts heartbreak and joy, a honey-and-gravel blend of Johnny Cash, Kris Kristoffersen and Neil Diamond. Although occasionally used to romantic ends – in the wonderfully downbeat ‘Sweetness’, for example, where a lover is implored to undress for him “against all hope and sense of decency“, or the simply lovely ode to his wife ‘Dear Ashley’ – That Voice is more often deployed in negative, world-weary or even flat-out nihilistic ways. Statements like “…the world spins round and I don’t care any more“, or the bleak “Your Mommy doesn’t love you and your father’s just a slave” (‘Seven Horses Seen’) sound somehow more emphatic, more stark and troubling, when delivered in Hinson’s beguiling tones.

Another significant feature is the instrumentation. It feels impressive that Hinson hasn’t simply rested on the laurels of his vocal talents but has also put together an album awash with dramatic arrangements. The album opens with an instrumental overture ‘A Call To Arms’, with slow, sweet violins and laconic brass, and throughout the arrangements are striking and attention-grabbing, most particularly on ’2s and 3s’ (all echoey dissonance, twangs and thuds), the deep, deep drama in the strings of ‘The Striking Before The Storm’, and ‘Watchman, Tell Us’ – one of the best tracks of all, with its experimental feel, the strident pace, rattling-tapping percussion, layered vocals and tuning-up-instrument string interjections. Also impressive is the near-dystopian instrumental element of the long closing track ‘The Returning’, bleak, harsh, sinister and anguished, full of strange crackles and thunder and atmosphere.

Several tracks have the feel of gospel, or an old-time spiritual about them (’2s and 3s’, ‘The Striking Before the Storm’ and ‘The Hero Will Never Hang’), and religion generally seems to be a prevalent lyrical concern: witness ‘The Cross That Stole This Heart Away’, and ‘My God, My God’. This tallies well with the overall intense seriousness of the mood. This is not a lighthearted album, nor one leavened by much humour.

Both ’2s and 3s’ and ‘The Striking Before the Storm’ suffer somewhat from a lack of focus, a kind of simultaneous intensity yet incoherence which can befuddle the listener. The best tracks, though, avoid this: the appeal of ‘Sweetness’ is as much in its directness and simplicity as in its vocal delivery, for example; while ‘Watchman, Tell Us of the Night’ throws together many diverse elements, but in a way that is completely riveting, and possessing its own musical internal logic.

Overall the impression is of a piece of work at once coherent yet at the same time oblique and mysterious. The way Hinson never rests on the laurels of his superlative vocal talents, but rather produces music and arrangements of equal weight, texture and significance to his voice is admirable. In doing so he has produced an album that has depth, resonance and class all of its own.