Tommy Hale – All At Sea

Tommy Hale – All At Sea

Holiday Disaster Records

CD/LP/DL

Released 12 April 2024

New solo album by Dallas-based musician Tommy Hale, recorded in the UK with the assistance of personnel from the band The Snakes, plus guitarist Nick Beere. This 10 track record comes nearly a decade on from his well-received Magnificent Bastard LP. Ian Canty writes…

Coming to us from the wonderfully named Holiday Disaster record label, Texas native Tommy Hale welcomes us his new long player All At Sea with Hideaway. This initial effort forms itself into an entrancing introduction for the uninitiated, being a layered and dynamic sound that has guitar jangle underpinned by buried backing vocals on an attractively droning Rock & Roll structure. From their we segue into World Won’t Wait, where a “My Sharona” boogie rhythm is paired with clear keyboard lines. Much like its predecessor, this high-energy tune readily lodges in the memory, but next Let’s Start A Fire is more of a slow burning, epic tale of remorse embellished with touches of Country Rock.

Americana is used in the PR handout that accompanied this promo, but Tommy’s work on All At Sea is more multifaceted, a case of adding the appropriate dash than full immersion in that millieu. The elegant, fresh but tense intro to Esperanza brought to mind for me the more ornate offerings from early 1980s Elvis Costello and while Hale’s viewpoint is inevitably more US-centric, the fine detail in the storytelling on display bears out the comparison. Beauty In Darkness then emerges on a downbeat foot, but the beautifully realised musical landscape and dreamlike, eerie undertow soon makes it stand out.

On the second half of the LP Now You Know takes us back to the driving, sparky Pop Rock that informed All At Sea’s opening salvo. An insistently catchy number powered by a tonne of vim and some incisive guitar playing, it sets the scene nicely for for the acoustic swing of Radio Towers, which comes next with a serving of touching and wistful nostalgia. The hard-hitting R&R punch of How The Story Goes comes in its wake, an infectious melody that includes a brief weird out Psych section to slow the tempo just for a moment. I really liked the explosive guitar playing and the bass that anchors this piece, simply inspired playing that adds greatly to the end product.

A sad look back over times gone by in Last Town Before The Border is the most Country-tinged of all the songs featured on this LP. A far as C&W tropes go, we get pedal steel and the song’s character drinking to forget what he was drinking about, but this is realised with a love for the form and a honesty that can’t be denied. Finally we arrive at the title track of All At Sea. What we end with is all about relaxed pace and the canny deployment of instrumentation that goes to build real atmosphere, The drum sound here is a work of art and the restraint is a crucial point in providing the album with a fitting climax.

All At Sea is a confident, addictive and excellently performed showcase for Tommy Hale’s songwriting to truly shine. Credit also must be given to producer Simon George Moor, who expertly manages the sonic palette and makes it dovetail perfectly with Hale’s sharp tales of loss, regret and salvation. There’s always hope in Tommy’s world, despite the fallibility of the human condition and that is ultimately what makes All At Sea work. The finely drawn portraits of the songs are allied to natty music and it all goes together like a dream.

Tommy Hale’s website is here and he is on Facebook here

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