If you’re not familiar with the work of Hip Hatchet then there are a few things you should know. First of all, Bronchtein is a storyteller. Like the greats of the genre, his songs paint pictures of one man’s wanderings, tales of a life lived all too keenly, at turns defiant and wearied but always moving forward. The second thing you ought to know is that Bronchtein manages to do this without once sounding trite or contrived. You get the sense that these are the words of an honest man, that every strength and weakness detailed on these songs is known all too well. This is folk music as it is meant to sound, whiskey-soaked bravado meets heartsick sincerity, a brutally forthright account of one individual.

The first song is the title track, serving as the perfect introduction to the album with lines such as, “I guess I’ll just pretend that I’m much harder of a man than I actually am” and “man, I can’t commit for shit, but damn can I act and pretend”. The song also provides the first taste of Bronchtein’s excellent vocal delivery which pirouettes between dust ‘n gravel growls and heart-pouringly intimate confessions. Next up is ‘Coward’s Luck’, an older Hip Hatchet song which has been given a makeover with lush instrumentation (including pedal steel and organ) and a bolder, more confident sound. ‘Small Bird Song’ follows, a dusty travelling song packed with romantic longing, with lines like, “With your skin as soft as sawdust and a smile’s crooked charm / Baby, drinking helped to pass the time but this is moving on”. With its use of migratory birds as an allegory for wandering, the song brings to mind Jim Harrison’s novel The Road Home, particularly the sections concerning the nomadic grandson, whose romantic urges are matched only by his passion for the natural world:

“Would she be physically involved again in my personal phenology, my wanderings that were directed by bird migrations, available sunlight, the births and deaths of wild-flowers and movements and hibernation of mammals?”

The jaunty bar-room country chorus of ‘Travel Map’ hides the story of a man who is struggling. It’s not difficult to imagine dazed red eyes and trembling hands as Bronchtein sings, “The coffee in this place must be fucking laced / I feel like I might puke and I can’t concentrate”. But the song also shows another side to his struggle, the difference between the person he appears to be versus the person he is. Bronchtein describes this false exterior, the leathery layers of what he thinks constitutes a ‘real man’, as “the man I’d hid beneath”, so when he says, “I was keeping it together like a real man must”, it’s apparent that he’s barely managing, if at all. It’s a hint that perhaps all that wandering is taking its toll, and not just in a negative sense, as if he’s caught a glimpse of himself along the way and it turns out not to be the guy breaking hearts and blazing through bars.

The next track is ‘David’s Wolves’, an excellent slice of Field Report-style Americana about good-for-nothin’ buddies raising glasses and raising hell, complete with slide guitar and the full spectrum of delivery, from husky murmurs to great throaty snarls. Then ‘Ladies Night’ displays a gooey tender side, but it doesn’t last long as his girl is soon twirling with some other guy, a boy with whiskers on his chin who “can’t dance for shit”. That doesn’t stop Bronchtein getting all pretty on us for a while though:

“Meet me down by ladies night
That beacon in the sky
Where pretty girls get twirled around
Until they recognize
That love’s about being turned and dipped
And moving your feet in time”

‘Tacoma Bound’ is another travelling song, about heading up north from Oregon and into Washington. It’s also a love song, because he isn’t going to Tacoma for no good reason: “The highway’s only lonesome if you’ve got no where to go \ I’m headed north Tacoma bound to see an angel that I know”. Next we have ‘Words of Wisdom’, a piano ballad, followed by ‘Cars Look Like Crying’ which mopes along in a haze of shame and regret. ‘Father Redemption’ sounds cheery and merry but again hides a darker story:

“Well I went to work in town
And loved the best I could
And mother fortune smiled on me
But nothing that I did
Could fill the void I hid
And fed with depravity”

The tracks ends with the narrator holding himself down in the cold Sandy River, so not exactly a happy-ever-after. The final track begins reticent but soon gathers pace in bursts of passion, telling the story of a funeral, apparently of a father, and our man’s struggle to remain “a man” despite it all: “As a man of god’s voice bounced off the walls / I made a man of me tryin’ to hide it all”. It’s perhaps the most direct look at the soul beneath the armour and the pretense, that bright thing that starts to force at the seams and gets harder to hide and hurts like hell.

For me the album brought to mind Bukowski’s poem ‘Bluebird’. Both speak of that vulnerable core at the heart of every man, and the desperate, ridiculous attempts to suffocate it with cigarette smoke or drown it in whiskey or cover it over with scars. Hold You Like a Harness is an album about tough guys who know deep down that they aren’t so tough. Yeah they fight and drink and make merry, but they’re also sentimental and lovesick and terrified of everything. As Bukowski puts it:

“Then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little in there
I haven’t quite let him die
and we sleep together like that
with our secret pact
and it’s nice enough to make a man weep
but I don’t weep,
do you?”

You can buy Hold You Like a Harness on CD or as a digital download via the Hip Hatchet Bandcamp page right now. I’d suggest you get right to it.

The post Hip Hatchet – Hold You Like a Harness appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The album opens with ‘Divided By Animal’ which sets the tone for the album, a finger-picked paean to a simpler life and Weaver’s organic personal philosophy. It’s full of lines like “Whatever happens that’s all I ever want“ and ”Not rich by what I own but rich by what I let go.“ The second track, ‘Rambling Bones,’ follows a similar thread, opening with:

”The hills look like different kinds of fur in the morning
dirty wool-torn clouds blowing through the chinks in my day
neck-deep in the brambles holding pieces of the beast
bring the dogs to the river where the sea used to be.“

The song is the story of a wandering man, of a man who’s life is governed not by the economy or advertising agencies but by the rhythms of the natural world, a man ”out there looking for the last blank space on the map“. It reminded me strongly of a novel I read recently, The Road Home by Jim Harrison, and one character in particular (named Nelse) who wanders around America, living off the land and spending his days doing surveys of the local wildlife. Lots of Weaver’s lyrics seem incredibly relevant to the book, even when he isn’t describing the natural world. The line ”Freckles on her shoulders like birds on a deer / there’s nothing she won’t tell you after two sips of beer“ is especially apt as the only thing that can rival birds and plants for Nelse’s attention is the influence of a certain young woman.

The fourth track, ‘Dear Brown Earth’, is another stand-out, beginning with the ambient chattering of birds and the line ”Some days I go waking with the dog just to go where a dog wants to go.“ The song sounds like a frosty morning, you can almost see the watery light falling through gathering clouds and feel winter on the wind as dry browns leaves blow in drifts. ‘Low Ride’, the final track, is perhaps the best of all. An epic of over eight minutes, it has a wonderfully gentle and reflective cadence, flickering with firelight and the warmth of loved ones. It’s really, really beautiful and one of my favourite songs of the year so far.

”For you I’d burn a house down
I’d break a star from the sky
snow in the snow oaks
come sit by the fire
we’ll talk about the old days
and whittle out the night
get dizzy in the treetops
while the coyotes cry“

To support the new album, Weaver is embarking on a national bicycle tour entitled It’s All the River, in which he will perform at farms, bookstores, bicycle shops and small music venues. The tour will see him follow the course of the Mississippi, from Minneapolis to New Orleans. He aims to use volunteer projects (such as planting native species, prairie restorations and river cleanups), along with songs and poetry to connect audiences to the river and surrounding land. Check the list of tour dates if you’re interested in catching a show,

I’ll leave you with some words from the man himself, taken from his micro-site set up by Banjo Brothers:

“I Would Rather Be a Buffalo came from the thin places, in the forests I wander and the cities I ride. On most days there is a few feet of space between this world and the spirits, the places where I found I Would Rather Be a Buffalo were worn down to an inch or less. I’m willing to risk sentimentality or an over sincere jest to say these things, to preserve the rivers and box canyons, the needlework light in the tall pines, and the blank spaces on the map for wolves, bears and my heart to wander.”

You can buy I Would Rather Be a Buffalo via Hymie’s Records.

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