Cory Hanson, the enigmatic songwriter, mostly known for fronting the surrealist neo-psych band, Wand, comes out swinging with straight-ahead folk-tinged rockers on his latest solo album, Western Cum. With Wand, especially on their 2019 release, Laughing Matters, Hanson refined his ability to weave unexpected vocal melodies into the crevices of angular rhythms and Can-ish grooves. On Western Cum, Hanson trades in the spookiness of Wand’s spacious and atmospheric sound for late-70s, Cali-sun soaked guitar riffs and folky interludes.

Never one to sit still or worry about expectations of others, Hanson doesn’t let his songs settle into a typical pattern. This is one of the elements that makes Wand so intriguing and even when operating in more conventional soundscape, as on Western Cum, Hanson still surprises the listener with sudden shifts in dynamics, melody, and feeling. In the ever-shifting soundscape, you hear elements of Neil Young and Crazy Horse, then the guitar power-pop of early Matthew Sweet, and then it can shift to the soft, deadhead jangle of The Mother Hips. Many of the songs, including standout “Persuasion Architecture,” takes the listener through at least five different genres belying there under 5-minute track lengths. Hanson is definitely flexing his melodic and songwriting skills he has developed with the peers in Wand. 

Hanson’s lyrics are esoteric in nature, but each one is a vignette or short story about the alluring but unforgiving West. The songs play out as a Thompson-esque raucous journey of balls-to-the-walls guitar riffs and singer-songwriter motifs that, on one hand play homage to classic rock, but also a vehicle for Hanson’s own dream-like, kaleidoscope reality. Hanson relates, “The thing about the West that I love is that there’s this sense of freedom and expanse and adventure, but then there’s also this peril and fear that it’s an ugly place.”

Every song is its own mini epic that is hard to choose just one favorite. The record is meant to be taken in as a whole with each song its own episode in an old Western where the grand arc of the story only makes sense upon the final climax.

Drag City

Release Date: June 23. 2023

*Originally published in Content Magazine.