Monday, October 28, 2024

Steve Hill - Hanging On A String

Steve Hill’s last album, 2022’s Dear Illusion, was an upbeat affair on which his usual one-man band sound was frequently augmented by horns on a bunch of songs dead set on brightening up your day.  Hanging On A String, it’s fair to say, is not a similarly sunny sequel to that album – and perhaps no wonder when his life in between included waking up in the middle of a house fire, and surviving a couple of serious road accidents.
That house fire experience is referenced in the first line of the title track, in the midst of a storm of serrated edge guitar and stomping kick drum.  You might say there’s a whiff of ZZ Top boogie about the riffing, except Hill isn't aiming for the Texas trio’s easy vibe.  Instead you get a screeching
Steve Hill prepares to bring the walls tumbling down
Pic by Jean Sebastien Desilets
guitar solo, and Hill musters some extra angst on the way to a scrabbling conclusion.  It’s a first salvo of the agitation and anxiety that pervades much of the album.
‘Devil’s Handyman’ is a dark and menacing grind, with Hill’s voice echoing like he’s in a cavern of night as he serves up the viewpoint of the title character – a dealer taking advantage of people’s vulnerability, with a very fitting danse macabreof off kilter guitar.
Later, ‘World Gone Insane’ stirs up more darkness, opening with a slow and haunted guitar motif before letting rip on a nightmare voyage of paranoia about the modern world, driven by a Sabbath-like fast-churning riff coated in fuzz and feedback.  Hill pounds away for nearly 7 minutes until a final scraping drone of guitar spirals down the proverbial plughole, and to be honest I reckon the radio edit does the job rather more crisply.
The issue of Artificial Intelligence rears its ugly head on ‘You Know Who’, a mid-paced outing whose melody carries a Bowie-like sense of alienation – though Hill’s delivery is growling rather than fey.  But ‘Turned To Dust’ is a rather better tune, lamenting a past that’s gone and can’t be recaptured, accompanied by an intriguing, slurring guitar line.
Hill brings these themes to a conclusion with a cover of The Doors’ ‘When The Music’s Over’, which comes with a spooky intro of snaking lead guitar and half-buried spoken conversation before settling into it’s ponderous groove.  It’s a clear fit in terms of the dark vibe that’s threaded through the album, but its brooding through-a-glass-darkly progress doesn’t do much for me, at least until Hill whips up a bit of a storm in its second half.
It's not all doom and gloom mind you.  ‘Show Ya’ is an elemental, breathless declaration of the determination that has enabled him to make music his career.  It’s basic rock’n’roll with an almost punkish energy, and gives the album a welcome shot of adrenaline.  ‘Maggie’, meanwhile, is a celebration of its eponymous heroine, with an Angus Young-like teasing bluesy intro that gives way to a good time boogie as Hill recounts Maggie’s qualities – with a few dubious notions along the way, until the final line delivers the pay-off.
There’s a bonus track too, in ‘Just Have To Ask’.  It’s a mid-tempo refection on the need for a helping hand – which is, in fact, at hand if one could only ask.  There’s a suitably uplifting tune lurking in there too, if it could only escape the rather too measured backing.
Steve Hill continues to confound with the sound his one-man set-up produces.  But a couple of tracks here are overlong, and the saw-toothed guitar tone that dominates much of the album becomes a bit wearing.  A wistful or romantic acoustic song such as he’s produced in the past would have helped to balance the atmosphere.  But I bet he’ll be back in a couple of years to ‘Show Ya’ again.
 
Hanging On A String is out on 1 November, and can be ordered here or pre-saved for digital here.

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