On his previous record Heal, Tim Showalter faced his biggest fears, all of his losses and sadness, and sublimed them into songs. It all lead to expected catharsis, but it left him with the question that rises every time the author shares his most intimate emotions - what's next? How to push it further? Is it time to go backwards? As these questions are not easy to answer, Tim waited for an answer to come to him, instead of frantically searching for it. He decided to spend some time on tour and see where that will take him. Listening to his new album Hard Love, you can conclude that he had made a good choice. One-way decadent travelling life on four wheels was just what he needed to galvanize his creative process. As a nomad myself, I can relate to the outburst of creativity that erupts every time you visit a place you have never been to before.
Hard Love differs from its predecessors, but it still managed to capture what Strand Of Oaks was striving for on all of their live performances - space psychedelic r'n'r folk spectacle. First two songs, Hard Love and Radio Kids nurture a sound that triggers peculiar mashup of The Flaming Lips and The Replacements. On the other hand, On The Hill and Taking Acid and Talking With My Brother are chilled melodies on the edge of consciousness that speak about psychedelic awakening. Cry is a phenomenal raw melancholic ballad, simple in the arrangement but complex in its emotional delivery. Quit It and Rest Of It are proto-punk numbers with glam vibe that surprisingly increase the tempo at the end of the record.
Moving forward from folk box in which he was involuntarily put, Strand Of Oaks became sonically adjacent to Primal Scream and The Verve. It's not a prosaic copy-paste method, rather evolution of the sound that gives Hard Love credibility and opportunity to be one of the best r'n'r efforts of the year.
