Will Hoge – Draw the Curtains

For Will Hoge, it’s never been about the lyrics. And, no surprise here, it still isn’t. Draw The Curtains, the follow-up to last year’s self-released The Man Who Killed Love, finds him tossing around comfortably familiar heartland rock phraseology.

But pushing into virgin musical territory really isn’t what drives Hoge. He practices the art of taking up a battered telecaster and a well-worn hook and pumping new vitality into them with uncomplicated, red-blooded emotion.

Hoge’s potent rasp has mellowed a bit since 2000’s Carousel without losing any of its urgent edge. Not that he’s ever gotten a sound that could be called “pristine” in the studio, but Draw The Curtains is even less so. As his voice strains against the earnest swell of a melody and the burn of a melancholy lyric, the ragged and imperfect notes are left intact.

Hoge’s themes have aged some, too. These ten tracks are less about barbed kiss-offs — with the exception of the bottleneck guitar boogie “Sex, Lies And Money” — and more about feeling the weight and wear of pain inflicted in relationships over time. “Dirty Little War” takes on divorce, and against the smoldering, B3 sway of “Silver Or Gold”, Hoge draws deep from the well of pain felt by a woman in a soul-deadening marriage.