Sometimes You Hurt the Ones Hate

After two decades of working with producers and prestige indie labels such as and , and, significantly, following the death of his good friend and frequent collaborator , set up shop as an independently operating entity with the self-produced , the 2021 debut of his own label. Two years later, his third self-released album, , follows a wide-angle formula he established in 2018 with his first self-production, (released on ), his most personal album to that point and one that reflected back on the 1970s and '80s of his childhood. While subsequent releases (all self-produced) were more populated with characters of his own making as well as major and minor celebrities of the era, they continued to dwell in an unbeautified nostalgia for a bygone era filled with vinyl records, ashtrays, and TV antennas. These albums were also all recorded -- some exclusively -- with multi-instrumentalist . returns for , one of 's most expansively arranged outings of this fruitful period, with a trio of horn players, a trio of string players, four backing vocalists, and programming and "noise" among the album's credits. It's a compact, eight-song set consisting of track titles like "Neiman Marcus," "Match Game 77," and (soul singer) "Mr. Frank Dell," but he kicks things off with "James Hoskins," a work of psychedelic rock inspired by an employee of a Cincinnati TV station holding his workplace hostage in 1980. (After 90 minutes, the hostages were released unharmed, but Hoskins had murdered his girlfriend earlier that night.) The song opens with an unstable chord and sustained attack of drums before settling into an ominous, racing rock groove powered by a dancing bassline and overdriven, low blurts of noise as , in typical literary fashion, takes the point of view of the desperado ("They don't play for the common man/Doing his best to swim"). Now that he has our attention, he slows things down for the folkier, strings-embellished "Neiman Marcus" ("Losing his faith in a Neiman Marcus/Feeding his loss in Central time zone"), then strips things back further for the melancholy, intriguingly titled "A Lover, a Balcony Fire, an Empty Orchestra," which finds backed by a mid-century-style vocal group alongside spacy synths and acoustic guitar. Resurrecting faded ghosts of or , the vocal group reappears on other tracks, including the more-dedicated retro entry "In a Way Probably Never." To end the album, intimate solo track and album highlight "A Buildings Kind of Building" re-establishes his ability to conjure poignancy and poeticism without bells or whistles before arriving at brighter closer "I Was a Line," which is nevertheless dripping in musical and lyrical nostalgia. At 22 minutes in length, definitely feels like a minor release for , but it's no less accomplished. ~ Marcy Donelson