Posted by: Johnny Loftus on December 10, 2007 at 3:00 pm
SEAN MADIGAN HOEN, The Liquor Witch (Greyday, 2007)
Listen: “If You Must Dance (Do So Darkly)”
[audio:http://www.detour-mag.com/audio/IfYouMustDanceDoSoDarkly.mp3]
Sean Madigan Hoen’s new full-length begins with nearly ten minutes of found sounds, gentle acoustic guitar, and the captured voices and hubbub of an everyday life gone by. At one point everything drops out, and there’s just the drone of a friend’s rambling answering machine message, the kind we all used to get when there were answering machines. And then the proper song starts, and it’s a pauper’s ballad with Hoen’s voice wrapped in the silvery reverb Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois favored for U2’s Unforgettable Fire.
As “Untitled” proves, Hoen has moved far and away from the scarred, urgent emo-pop of The Holy Fire. But it was always his divisive, mercurial emotional state that drove that band, anyway, and that same search for sanity seems laced through the tracks of Liquor Witch, too. Search for change, fear of change; these are the stumbling blocks Hoen’s pushing around on Witch, pushing them up and down the cliffs of the album’s genre divisions. “Solar Explosions” is arty, NYC-style indie rock; “Lift My Eyes” employs violins for its hopeful sway; and “If You Must Dance [Do So Darkly],” as beautiful of a love song as it is, admits its own history with evil.
Hoen’s never gotten enough credit as a songwriter, as that guy who can make your blood run cold even as you wish you were him. Liquor Witch can be the album to do it for you, and if you need more proof of his diversity, drop in on “We Are Pedestrians.” If you’ve ever moved away from friends or lovers — or moved away from pain — it’ll reach right into your chest. — Johnny Loftus
[ tags]Holy Fire, Sean Madigan Hoen, Liquor Witch, Brian Eno[/tags]
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