You can listen to Tommy Hale and specifically the first song here, “Hideaway” and imagine you can have a decent handle on the way he’s doing it.
You won’t.
One minute he’s dirty rock n roll (and I’m assuming right now that he’s the type to play his guitar as low-slung as it’ll go) with lines about being in a “cabin deep in the woods, playing records by the misunderstoods” and you’re imagining how the rest of the record is panning out.
But Tommy, you see, he’s cleverer than you. The next minute it is all 80s synths and chunky riffing. “World Won’t Wait” sorts that (although even here the guitar solo sounds dirtier than Keith Richards’ search history).
Tommy Hale is the sort of artist who made me call the website Maximum Volume Music. That means you aren’t bound by genres. You only care if it’s good.
Make no mistake. “All At Sea” is good.
“Let’s Start A Fire” sort of lurks as if it’s waiting to attack you, “sweeter than Mexican coke” he intones. I’m assuming here that he doesn’t mean the sort I had in the Coca-Cola shop when I had a go at their round-the-world platter…..
Then he stays in Latin America for “Esperanza”, there are some lush keys on “Beauty In Darkness”. It almost seems like he’s reading poetry to you rather than singing a song.
If it has felt like he was playing what is a soundtrack to a film in his head up to this point, then “Now You Know” bursts out of the shadows with a withering critique of the modern world: “Now I talk to my phone, a million friends but we all die alone” is the best among many gems (we’ll ignore the irony that I’m writing this on a Samsung..)
“Radio Towers” is superbly reflective, while Dogs D’Amour themselves would be pleased if they’d written something as ragged and catchy as “How The Story Goes”.
A record that frequently sounds as if it’s a compilation of all Hale’s ideas, takes a stroll into Americana with “Last Town Before The Border” and does it magnificently – it does everything magnificently.
I’m someone who still judges records on whether they would have fitted on one side of a C90 tape. The best ones always did. This one does.
Not before it’s had a go at its evocative title song, and it ends a record that really does get better with repeated listens.
His first for eight years (it was supposed to be started in 2019 but tragedy, then the pandemic struck) was recorded in England despite Hale being from Dallas. Maybe that accounts for the hybrid sound, but either way, Tommy Hale deserves to make a splash with “All At Sea”.
Rating 8.5/10
