All At Sea is Tommy Hale's long overdue follow up to the brilliant Magnificent Bastards album, once again recorded in England this time in Wiltshire at Mooncalf Studios, with almost the same band as last time, with the core of The Snakes Johnny O'Sullivan Dan Tilbury and Simon George Moor alongside Nick Beere with Simon Moor in the producer's chair. In-between originally booking studio time and actually recording the album Tommy's dad had a heart attack that he didn't recover from, then pandemic happened, both events inform the album.
From the grinding guitars at the start of Hideaway, as the lyrics start to make clear that the need for safe harbour from the 21st century is imperative, finding somewhere safe to stay while all the terror blows over, no matter how deep in the woods you are, or how many records you have by The Misunderstood you'll still be lucky to get away from all this.
World Won't Wait has a Knack for a good line, as Tommy tries to figure out if he's ready for the world or not, as the keyboard line becomes more insistent.
Let's Start A Fire as times become more incandescent, fear stalks the land as this slowly evolves, like you find it hard to believe what's going on and you feel the need to burn everything to the ground before starting again.
Esperanza is a down at heart song of love and loss for the wondrous Esperanza, that has the feel of one of the ballads from Nick Cave's Kicking Against The Pricks album, The song was written by Tex Smith, as Tommy sits down to wait for her return, he'll never stop hoping she walks back through that door again.
Beauty In Darkness is slowly hoping to find a few chinks of light in all the despair as the slow careful piano makes clear hope hasn't been totally extinguished yet.
Now You Know has an attractions style insistent organ and guitars as Tommy makes clear his feelings, that sometimes it's better to not know how someone really feels, but this time he's going to spill his guts and with good reason.
Radio Towers opens by asking whatever happened to the bridge, as I write this on the same day as the Baltimore Bridge tragedy this song hits home, Like Greg Vanderpool knew something, while Tommy wonders about all sorts of landmarks in his world that seem to have gone, while wishing things could go back to how they used to be before all the traumas.
How The Story Goes has a real pub rock feel complete with the gang chorus as we find out just How The Story Goes, as the guitars get phased in the breakdown before everything freaks out again.
Last Town Before The Border is the most Texan song on the album, with some delicate slide lap steel, this sounds like Tommy is in a local bar sipping whisky reminiscing, while hoping that whatever is on the other side of that border will make him feel whole again.
The album closes with All At Sea a slow moody closing number, the drums are in the distance, as waves slow come in, while Tommy feels like he's being dragged further from the shore, grasping for a lifeline, as he gets glimpses in his dreams of how things used to be, when everything felt decent and whole, if only they still did.
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