We last featured Maine’s prolific songwriter Max García Conover back in 2018. As well as Among Horses III, a collaborative release with Haley Heynderickx for Son Canciones, Conover was working on an ambitious project that saw him release a song every single week. This facilitated the development of a huge collection of songs, and Conover curated them into records like Motorhome and Stagger that were also released on Son Canciones.
This spring saw the release of ‘Handsome Suit’, the first new music from Max García Conover since. As ever, the track is rooted in the folk tradition, influenced not only by the likes of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen but more contemporary songwriters too, with echoes of Josh Ritter and Joe Pug present in the sound. But Conover is more than capable of standing on his own amongst such songwriters, having developed a distinctive balance between wistful reflection, playful observation and a pervasive sense of emotion that wavers between subtle ache and urgent sting.
‘Handsome Suit’ is a nostalgic song that evades the worst trappings of the mindset, looking back not with rose-tinted vision but something clearer. The result is less forgiving than many a backward look, but no less fond, a song that refuses to polish out the imperfections and flaws of the past, accepting that such features are very much a part of life.
half puerto rican in a handsome suit
skinny little nothing in the buffalo news
half light ticking on the falling snow
accidental baby and she moved back home
you’re crying in the kitchen and you don’t know why
drunk granddaddy in a santa tie
broke wood stove in the living room
half puerto rican in a handsome suitboy you’re gonna wake to the pain everyone’s in
and what do you do then