Californian Cory Hanson, guitarist/singer with Wand, has delivered a lovingly-crafted, nuanced and atmospheric album that invites you into an intimate yet epic world of dark and light, smoke and fire, the real and the ethereal.
This multi-talented musician on his second solo outing, after 2016’s The Unborn Capitalist From Limbo, largely eschews the virtuoso guitar work-outs many may have signed up for if they know and love Wand on record and/or have seen Wand live – but when the axe-travaganza comes, it’s well worth the wait, the almost eight-minute Another Story From The Center Of The Earth being a real highlight.
So if it’s not Wand, what is it? Pale Horse Rider is folky, it’s country, it’s country-rock and psych pop. It’s prog, it’s ambient, it’s Americana. It sounds like America – and it sounds, in a good way, like Cory’s been through the desert on A Horse With No Name (there’s a distinctly 1970s vibe to the whole thing, and it was recorded in a desert setting).
The songs take on some heavy subjects – the melodic title track’s rider is Death himself (“Sweep the kings into the sewers/ And queens beneath the rug”) – but this project is not without a dark sense of humour, a sense of creative fun, even though much of it is distinctly melancholy.
The sound of the steel guitar is in evidence right from dreamy opener Paper Fog. Early stand-out Angeles builds steadily and impressively as a fine showcase for Hanson’s delicate, even vulnerable tenor – “You gotta look the beast right in the eyes/ Until you see yourself/ And all that you can never be” – before reaching a discordant fade.
Paper Fog ends with birdsong and Bird Of Paradise reprises the phoenix theme of Angeles – “I dreamed myself tonight/ A bird with wings of fire.” Limited Hangout maintains the melancholy atmosphere while Vegas Knights ups the country stakes to become the breeziest and brightest song of the collection.
If the soundscapes are epic, the mood is often cinematic – the title Pale Horse Rider sounds like a Clint Eastwood picture (as did High Planes Drifter, from Wand’s Laughing Matter, a song that wouldn’t be totally out of place here). Tracks four and eight – Necklace and Surface To Air – are experimental instrumental pieces that recall David Lynch movies, with Mulholland Drive probably the most apposite (Surface To Air also works as an extended intro to Another Story From The Center Of The Earth).
Closing song Pigs, which starts and ends folky, seems to also offer faint echoes of The End by The Doors and is a fitting finale to an album that contains much to ponder and savour – it’s one to spend time with. You may know Hanson best from Wand, or various collaborations with Ty Segall & Co, but you will perhaps feel you know him better after Pale Horse Rider.
Pale Horse Rider by Cory Hanson is out now, from Drag City