This is the second of Hanterhir's two albums released simultaneously as a follow up to last year's triple album The Saving Of Caden and as the title suggests it lasts exactly an hour and contains 15 songs recorded throughout the bands 10 year career to date. And unlike its companion Songs We Learned In Cornish most of this album is in English. The cover features a rather beguiling picture of Lady Ridale Stardust.
The album opens with the intense blast of Cornish Psych rock that is Just The Way It Goes this is a driving propulsive song with mad wigging out guitars and full on percussion and is that some weird strings too a great blast off.
Little Black Cat is a trippy semi acoustic paean to a Little Black Cat that sits on your bed protecting you from whatever is going on outside in the wilds of Cornwall.
Radio Song was one of the bands earlier singles and it's a far more accessible sound than some of the bands other songs being reasonably straight-ahead indie prog with easily discerned if rather out their lyrics that makes it sound like an upbeat Galaxie 500 with those lovely chiming guitars.
The Centre Of All is a rather bass heavy intense blast of squalling storm ridden music as if they are at the centre of a hurricane and the lyrics emphasize exactly what sort of hurricane the protagonist has created.
Better Man calms things down somewhat even if the percussion is doing all sorts of wonderful stuff on the fringes as suddenly the song grows and grows and a cool tale unfolds.
F# is one of the bands previous singles and feels like the missing link between Grunge and prog shot through a shoegazing prism of sound and light to end up in a fractal prison of wonder at what this is really all about.
Stay Down is the first song with a chorus you could sing along too on this album and is sort of a bucolic space rock almost Bunnymen style song.
A New Horizon should probably be played on headphones lying outside in the middle of the woods staring at the stars through the trees, but it's daylight and I'm indoors and this is a spectral tune with some cool lyrics that don't match the horizon I can see as another relationship has ended and you have to move on, full of sadness that the stars might save you from.
How Can You Explain Events Today should be on every radio playlist around at the moment just for the title alone and the intro would make a perfect short news bed as the slow acoustic song grows and explodes with the guitars as the stories narrator then asks repeatedly How Can You Explain Events Today something that listening to it today of all days as the European Election results come in is a very pertinent question, and one that is pertinent most days the last few years.
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Soul Train isn't a soul disco number but a rumbling fractured song full of whispered layered vocals strummed guitars and a pulsing bass throb distorting minds and life lessons as they move to the next station.
Knots is full of pain and despair that will make your skin wrinkle like the knots in the trees they find out in the woods in Cornwall somewhere near Redruth, this is pounding aggressive riff beating indie rock as if Mercury Rev had been locked in a barn in Cornwall and only had sulphate for dinner.
TLS now is this a song about the Times Literary Supplement or Transport Layer Security or just the initials of his paramour that he discovers wants to party and get messed up and start sighing through the night with as the guitars chime and draw you and find out she's out partying with all your so called mates as the sound grows and engulfs you.
Our Hour is like a couple's therapy meeting crammed into three minutes eleven seconds of raged filled guitars and swirling noise accompanying the denouement of the relationship as it crashes to the ground around them even as they make the lyric who's sorry now feel like pained anguish rather than slushy sentimental gush.
Jevan is almost like the comedown as you look to the future and wonder how you'll make yourself heard even though this is one of the quietest tunes on the album as it rises and falls with the breeze through the wind charms on the edge of the hills.
The album closes with Omgonfort the one song that's also on Songs We Learned In Cornish only this time it's shortened to 5 minutes twenty Two seconds of prog indie guitar mayhem and whatever he's singing about in Cornish. So it's stripped of the strings and sounds a lot more focussed than the 10 minute plus version a great intense end to the album.
For lovers of Wild out there freaky alternative music go and find out more at www.easyaction.co.uk or www.hanterhir.com
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