It's been a few months, I'd say, since I listened to a new album - new to me, that is - that contained a song which made me listen to it over and over, and turned up loud, whenever I got to it, but Hidden Hands' third track "I Am Going But I Am Not Gone" has hooked me in just that way. Is it fair to describe it as 'alt-country'? I've never really thought of Cloher's music in those terms - it's not easy to pigeonhole, being structured principally on rock and pop forms while drawing heavily, and naturally, on folk and country streams. What gets me about that song, and about this album in general, is something that I can't put my finger on, but which comes with all music that strikes a chord, something that goes in around the back of my neck and top of my spine and, I don't know, just makes itself felt.
Dead Wood Falls has proved to be a real stayer - I've listened to it heaps, and consistently, since getting it back in '06 - which makes it all the more impressive that now, with Hidden Hands, Cloher and band seem to have topped it. Crisper in sound but no less atmospheric, and the songs, while perhaps less immediate, are somehow richer and deeper - even more satisfying than those on their first album. The rockier ones are driving and hook-laden and crunchily pleasing; the slower turns are touched by melancholy and often faintly spectral (especially the last song, "Watch Me Disappear"). I'm liking this very much.
