All At Sea – Tommy Hale (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

I will never understand why some artists seem so hell-bent on reinventing rock music when it has been fit for purpose for a long time. You could argue that it found the perfect form by the time the 1970s got underway, perhaps earlier, so why we have had to endure such grotesque machinations as rap-metal, symphonic rock, pop-punk, and the like is lost on me.

Tommy Hale knows that all the elements you are ever going to need are, and indeed have always been, within easy reach, and he demonstrates as much on his latest long-player, All At Sea. here we witness him gently hopping genres and gathering just enough shiny sonic things around his songs to bend rock ‘n’ roll to his own will for its duration. All At Sea is an album rooted in adversity and unexpected pain, and this sense of pathos hangs over it. Even heavy-hitting rockers such as opener Hideaway feel melancholic and wistful, but even so, it is a great way to get the ball rolling.

From here, we see precisely how inventive yet musically respectful Tommy and the posse (again made up of the great and good of the Thames corridor) are, mixing and matching, melding and moulding rock and rock-adjacent genres into their signature sound.

World Won’t Wait flirts with new wave sounds and playfully juggles with My Sharona’s iconic riff while Esperanza sees him wander into nostalgic-sounding border balladry. Now You Know is a Stones-infused, foot-on-the-monitor,heads-down-no-nonsense slice of pure groove, Last Town Before The Border is a gorgeous ambient-roots seduction and things round off with the title track, which feels a bit like Nick Cave gone country, hallucinatory and dreamlike.

As I said on the way in, Tommy Hale knows all the necessary sonic building blocks are already in place. The art is how deftly and delicately, or perhaps robustly and riotously, you fit those pieces together to make something new. Not just new, but recognisable too – fresh but familiar, that’s the trick on display here. And the way All At Sea has been built makes for an impressive array of sonic architecture indeed.