Neilson Hubbard – Sing Into Me

Though his roots are in Mississippi, Neilson Hubbard’s musical heart occupies a place of pure pop — a realm where melody, hooks and harmonies converge in a spirit of yearning and state of grace. For those of us who love this sort of stuff (and intuit a link between the Trouser Press of the 1980s and the No Depression of today), stumbling upon Hubbard’s underheralded solo debut, 1997’s The Power Slide, was like finding a long-lost Big Star album.

Where his 2000 follow-up Why Men Fail was darker and more meditative, with a tinge of Anglophilia in Hubbard’s Bowiesque quaver, Sing Into Me strips his songcraft to its luminous core. There’s hardly a wasted syllable amid this short, spare collection of nine tracks, with the music as soothing as a lullaby while the lyrics evoke the plain-spoken sincerity of prayer.

Most of the arrangements are built on Hubbard’s acoustic guitar, the stately piano and wispy harmonies of Cathy Horne, the bittersweet strains of David Henry’s cello, and the almost subliminal pulse of Craig Krampf’s percussion. While the Beatlesque buoyancy of “Everything’s Starting” could have fit just fine on The Power Slide, the baroque delicacy of the title track and the spiritual ache of the album-opening “Stars” make the artistry seem as intimate as a heartbeat. The cover of the Velvet Underground’s “Jesus” fails to improve on the weary perfection of the original, but it reinforces the redemptive quality that has taken Hubbard’s music well beyond power-pop revivalism.