Australia’s Hamish Anderson has an old soul and a young heart full of love for the blues. Anderson commanded the attention of the blues and rock world with his 2016 debut Trouble and built upon that with his 2019 follow-up album Out of My Head (which scored an Independent Music Award for “Best Blues Album”). Both releases saw Anderson team up with Grammy-winning producer Jim Scott (Tom Petty, Tedeschi Trucks Band). They blended the traditional language of the blues with his own heartfelt compositions and classic rock stylings.
When COVID curtailed worldwide touring, Anderson rode out the lockdown performing live-stream concerts and video sessions with brands like Guitar World and Martin Guitars. He spent the time honing his recording and production skills and rekindling his love of the electric guitar. Then, throughout 2023, the artist toured the US as support for both Gary Clark Jr and George Thorogood & The Destroyers, not only as an opening act but also as a special guest night on their encores. He also completed recording on his third album. The result is Electric, his first new album in five years. Aptly named, Anderson describes his latest release as a “Love Letter to the Electric Guitar.”
Anderson evokes nostalgic Blues feelings on “You’re Mine,” the latest single from his new album Electric. The soft-rock balladry of the vocal performance is greeted with sleek guitar chords and murky textures for a single that brings bluesy tropes to modern times. Anderson knows how to get the purity of emotional vulnerability out of his guitar. The artist’s guitar prowess is displayed on “You’re Mine,” as the weeping chords carry the downtrodden arrangement. At times explosive yet mostly docile and innocent, the instrumentation on “You’re Mine,” while soulful in its own right, acts as more of a canvas for Anderson’s crooning. The longing in the artist’s performance is emphasized by the touching poetry of the lyrics, creating an emotional vortex for the listener to get lost in. Anderson’s Electric is shaping up to be a landmark release for the rising star, and “You’re Mine” solidifies his shine via head-spinning guitar work and heart-wrenching lyricism.
Electric is Anderson’s most complete and mature artistic statement to date. He says that the time spent in pre-production allowed him to distill his sound to what he feels are his best elements and not shy away from giving the electric guitar a prominent voice. And while previous efforts often found him working with session musicians and entrusting the production to someone else, Electric was cut mostly live as a trio with his touring band (bassist Lauren Stockner and drummer Pete Marin) with appearances by Jessy Green on strings (Foo Fighters) and Jerry Borge on keys (Jonathan Wilson, Ziggy Marley) and finds him sharing production duties with David Davis (The War On Drugs, Lauren Ruth Ward, Miguel). The result is a stellar, high-energy album with a clear and unified vision that catches the energetic, raw band vibe of ’70s blues rock but updates it with modernized sounds and forward-thinking arrangements across eleven original songs and one cover song.
