Having first come to The Radio Hour via With the Rhythm of a Catfight, not only an intriguing title but my first taster of this artist and, indeed, this album, it did what every single should do. Make me want to know more. And more comes in the form of an entire album entitled Tim Hort, actually the name of the artist behind the moniker, The Radio Hour.
There is a darkness that runs through the songs found here, it acts as the common ground of the songs and the signature sound of the music, which in turn allows Hort to move in and out of various musical styles, knowing that this shaded musical glue is holding everything together.
Just take the opening three songs, the brooding, country-infused Death By Water, the ragged and spacious, ska-esque, staccato groove of Tuesday and the elegant and eloquence of Catfight, and you see just how much ground he can cover.
Add in the gothic abrasiveness of Killer On The Kennedy, the ambient, otherworldy drift of Easier This Way, less a song, more a sonic statement and the skewed, new wave-era Petty-esque sound of Look For You, and you realise just how much of a treasured property Tim Hort and The Radio Hour is.
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[…] second eponymous album sees Tim Hort offer us the other side of the sonic coin from that first collection of songs. Whereas there was a […]
[…] Tim Hort always manages to offer us something more than it seems, at least more than it appears on the first spin. It would be easy to pass this off as, broadly speaking, rootsy retro rock, or even to use the ubiquitous, almost meaningless label of the moment, dark Americana, but to do so would show that the author had not been listening properly, certainly not deeply enough. […]