Cory Hanson - The Unborn Capitalist From Limbo LP

Label: Drag City

Our Review:

Hanson is the frontman to the beloved LA psyche-punk outfit Wand. In Wand, Hanson's voice is deliberately buried amidst the candy-crush of cosmic distortion and damaged heaviness. It must be reiterated that those Wand records (especially Golem) are amazing! But we were not expecting how good Hanson would be on his own. The dynamics of those Wand songs were not shaped by fuzzed out sprawl, but through the charmed falsetto Hanson's voice that kindled images of Marc Bolan and a youthful Devendra Banhart.

The Unborn Capitalist From Limbo marks the first fruits of Hanson's solo songwriting, and it does not disappoint. Hanson's gilded voice soars above the muted acoustic guitar strum and fingerpicking, while cellist Heather Lockie's spritely arrangements are the perfect compliment to Hanson's vocals. The Unborn Capitalist From Limbo makes for a winsomely baroque, psych-pop-folk album of well-crafted tunes that are at once breezily effortless, yet magically lush. "The Garden Of Delights" could very well be some lost John Lennon song circa Abbey Road, imagined in a nitrous oxide take on Van Dyke Parks. While probably not a Repo Man reference, "Ordinary People" is the closest that Hanson gets to Wand as an introspective inversion of his other band's power pop ethos.