Description
Label Review.
2018 album also available in Vinyl.
Our Overview.
Since their nostalgic debit EP ‘Alien Sunset’ in October 2017, Max Clarke’s project Cut Worms release their debut album “Hollow Ground’ via Jaguar and it is a gem with Clarke expertly channeling pop stylings from the 1960’s with a lo-fi tinge.
New York based singer-songwriter Max Clarke has a knack for conjuring up warmth in his music, like endless summer or ageless youth. The 27-year old’s debut album, ‘Hollow Ground’, crackles with the heat of a love-struck nostalgia, woven together with a palpable Everly Brothers influence and retro sound. It reaches back into decades of plainspoken, unfussy and squarely American storytelling and pulls it forth into 2018.
A press release describes the lyrical themes of the album as: “Sometimes, on ‘Hollow Ground’, we find characters impossibly lustful, sometimes brooding, while in other parts they fumble along, hopeful and painfully self-aware. If the music can be said to have any sort of through-line, it revolves around Clarke’s obvious delight in singing his heart out through varying degrees of agony. His songwriting both evokes and explores the raw realm of youth, its weightlessness and possibilities, but channels it through the lens of someone more restrained, who’s been through it all before. Someone who’s old enough to know better but still gets drawn back in to the romanticism of teenage feelings—and knows how to take the listener along, too."
Some of ‘Hollow Ground’ bloomed from that same period of driven creativity that yielded EP ‘Alien Sunset’; both ‘Like Going Down Sideways’ and ‘Don’t Want To Say Good- Bye’ find new life on the album. The rest is new. There’s ‘Till Tomorrow Goes Away’, a sheepish love song, thrumming with twangy guitar and a two-step rhythm. ‘Cash For Gold’ channels buoyancy; a doo-wop effect on the sleepy backing vocals build out the dreaminess of Clarke’s own affecting croon.
‘Hollow Ground’ strikes the balance between cerebral and simplicity in his storytelling. His lyrics explore the raw realm of youth, its weightlessness and possibilities but channelled through a lens of restraint. Someone who’s old enough to know better but still gets drawn back into the romanticism of teenage feelings - and knows how to take the listener along, too.