Hollow Ground
Max Clarke has a knack for conjuring up warmth in his music, like endless summer or ageless youth. The 27-year-old’s debut LP, 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. 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 LP. 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 channeled through a lens of restraint. 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.
Max Clarke balances vintage recording methods with expressive songwriting on the ’60s-style pop ballads that fill his debut album as Cut Worms.
Ambient techno master Jon Hopkins balances dance-floor euphoria with armchair contemplation on Singularity, while German producer DJ Koze’s excellent Knock Knock feels like a day spent in paradise, and the Fiery Furnaces sound creeps back in on Eleanor Friedberger’s fourth solo LP, Rebound. These, plus Belly, Iceage,…
Max Clarke's debut album mines the heart and soul of rock's first decade.
Enter Cut Worms, a musical project helmed by New York-based (but Midwestern-raised) Max Clarke that’s unabashedly indebted to the Everlys.
Discover Hollow Ground by Cut Worms released in 2018. Find album reviews, track lists, credits, awards and more at AllMusic.
With their debut EP, Alien Sunset, Max Clarke's Cut Worms distilled nostalgic rock hidden behind a fuzzy layer of tape hiss and reverb. Less...
'Hollow Ground' by Cut Worms: Cut Worms makes a fun but not altogether original record in our review of 'Hollow Ground'