HEAL
Tim Showalter has titled this 2014 album *HEAL*—all in capital letters—and it shows a hard rock approach that suggests something closer to Arthur Janov’s primal scream therapy than any type of meditative or introspective healing. Working with producer John Congleton, engineer/synth player Ben Vehorn, and drummer Steve Clements, Showalter unleashes some serious ’70s/‘80s/‘90s–styled hard rock, far from the folk-rooted Americana of his previous work. “Goshen ’97” brings us back to his teenage years in Goshen, Ind., where he first imagined music as an escape. J Mascis adds a guitar solo that mirrors Showalter’s battling emotions from the time. The incredible seven-and-a-half-minute “JM” is a tribute not to Mascis but to the late Jason Molina, whose music (as Songs: Ohia, Magnolia Electric Co., and under his own name) greatly influenced Showalter’s intensely personal style. “Woke Up to the Light” finally slows things for a Mark Kozelek–like confessional. But little here settles for anything sedate. This is a big rock album with big beats and anthem-like songs that never teeter over into clinical bombast but remain infused with blood on the tracks.
Timothy Showalter's fourth album as Strand of Oaks and first for Dead Oceans is an album as memoir: stark and at times emotionally harrowing as it recounts with bracing candor the artist’s struggles with friends, family, and most of all himself.
“I was born in the middle, maybe too late, everything good had been made,” begins “Shut In,” a mid-album track on Strand Of Oaks’ Heal that sounds like Jim James doing an impression of Bruce Springsteen. The artist behind the project, Tim Showalter, thankfully doesn’t still believe this line. His fifth album as Strand…
Coming on like a hairy Care Bear, hirsute songsmith Timothy Showalter's first album in four years offers the listener a shoulder to cry on.
HEAL, Philadelphia-based mopester Timothy Showalter’s third album as Strand of Oaks, is a sonic reinvention of sorts.
The Dead Oceans debut from Goshen, Indiana-based songwriter Timothy Showalter, better known by his plant-based alias Strand of Oaks, Heal arrives after a period of personal tumult and self-reflection, and its ten tracks spend a considerable amount of time exploring its author's formative years, referencing everything from plastic Casio keyboards and "Singing Pumpkins in the mirror" to lost loves, skinny dipping, and the enduring works of the late Jason Molina, who is properly eulogized on the epic, Crazy Horse-kissed "JM."