The last time we heard Will Hoge was on his 2018 blistering political protest filled American Dream, much of which is playing out in streets as this is being written. This time around, however, it’s as if he’s content having gotten all that angst out. Instead, he retreats to a more familiar comfort zone, storytelling songs rich with Southern imagery, melodic hooks, and mostly unrelenting rock n’ roll. It’s about letting his road band loose in the studio, as after rehearsing for four days, these tracks were all laid down live in studio. There are plenty of moments on his self-produced Tiny Little Movies that bring that loud, raucous Crazy Horse spirit.
His lean band consists of Thom Donovan on guitars, Allen Jones on drums and Christopher Griffiths on bass. “There’s a classic, rock & roll centerpiece to everything this band does, but it’s still a group of four different people, and we all bring different influences to the table,” says Hoge, who turned to Grammy-winning producer/engineer Matt Ross-Spang (Jason Isbell, Margo Price, Lori McKenna) to mix the album at Sam Phillips Recording. “We’ve got a metalhead in the group. We’ve got a Motown fan. We’ve got a guitarist who loves Johnny Marr. It’s a unique hodgepodge of sounds coming together, and we tried to accentuate that.”
The album commences with a strong acoustic guitar strum and snare drum backbeat for “Midway Motel,” which is soon filled with jangling guitars that in pace, and perhaps in the theme of the song, resemble Jason Isbell’s “Super 8 Motel.” Like that one, this too is about the tawdry stories that lurk within as gleaned from the chorus – “At the midway motel/Just a mile down highway 5/Everybody’s got a story they’re trying to tell/You can run away or hold on/You can buy or you can sell/You get what you want/At the midway motel.
“The Overthrow” keeps the band at full throttle before settling into “Maybe This Is Ok,” an autobiographical song that speaks to contentment, bringing echoes of Elvis Costello. “Is This All that You Wanted Me For” is the quintessential break-up, a look-in-the-rearview-mirror tale where the protagonist is torn between whether he misses her or whether it was just a complete waste of time – “I picked up the pieces that were shattered/And I laid red roses on your door/Now it’s like it never even mattered/Tell me is this all you wanted me for.” On the atmospheric “Even the River Runs Out of This Town,” he more committed to and more broken by the loss of allowing her to get away, knowing she’d only be dragged down by his presence. “I love you so much, I ain’t asking you to stick around,” he sings during the song’s final moments.
Hoge turns self-confessional as he “wrestles with a ghost” on the ballad, “My Worst,” co-written with Dan Baird. Surely it leaves room for spiraling guitars in the break. With a melodic guitar and bass intro that could just as easily be on a late-era Beatles record, “That’s How You Lose Her” quickly gives way to full-throttle arena rock; recalling all the wrong moves in the final days of a love-gone-wrong, which by this point seems to be the album theme. Yet, unlike those tunes, Hoge sings like a man truly smitten in “Likes of You,” appropriately the gentlest tune on the disc, imbued with some nice slide guitar work.
”Con Man Blues” brings raucous punk rock and a feral approach to our current state, as if reprising topical matter from his last album. It’s not hard to discern who he’s singing about here – “Sinking in your hole of deprivation/Thumb sucker hiding in the sheets/Living with your own infatuation/While the rest of us are sleeping in the streets/While the rest of us are sleeping in the streets.” You may have heard the single, “The Curse,” a radio-friendly infectious singalong rocker punctuated with power chords and jangling guitars, totally emblematic of the album’s main sound and drive. Not surprisingly he ends on a breakup song, “All the Pretty Horses,” but this time he’s trying to give comfort to a female who seemingly married a sugar daddy only to see it fall apart.
You’ll hear the strains of plenty of the heartland rockers, be it Mellencamp or Seger, or from the southern side, Tom Petty. Yet, this is the core of Will Hoge’s approach – raw, amplified, inspired and reflective enough in his commanding voice to understand the lost battles and reach his own contentment.
