On 2014’s HEAL, his fifth album as Strand of Oaks, Timothy Showalter emerged as his own most compelling lead character. Showalter was a grown-up adolescent still mired in dark thoughts and intense desires: for the opposite sex, for self-eradication through drugs or worse, for his favorite song to come on the radio. Making or simply listening to music was a lifeline out of the confusion of youth and the disappointments of adulthood, which informed a song cycle simultaneously bleak and optimistic, as big as an arena yet as personal as an inner monologue. Showalter reminisced about “singing Pumpkins in the mirror,” and it’s not hard to imagine his fans finding similar salvation in “JM” or “Goshen ’97.”
And yet: “HEAL was bullshit, man.” In an exhaustive, candid Stereogum article, Showalter distanced himself from his breakthrough album, which he seems to think is too dark, too self-absorbed. “I’m sick of being the sad white guy with an acoustic guitar… We’re done with that shit,” he said. There’s not much acoustic guitar on the album, but that’s besides the point: Newly committed to his marriage and to a sunnier outlook on everything, Showalter no longer wants to rip his soul out and play harrowing songs night after night. That’s understandable: Who could fault the guy for wanting to be happy?
Consequently, Hard Love is more than a follow-up—it sounds like a direct response to HEAL. These new songs are never quite as dark or as deep, never quite as probing, which is not to say they’re superficial. Showalter seems to have made an effort not to sound quite as troubled. If his relationship to music once seemed desperate, he now sounds like a guy thrilled to be evoking Creation Records, one of the major touchstones on Hard Love. Featuring wobbly guitars and big drumbeats, “Everything” and “On the Hill” nod to bands like Primal Scream, the Jesus & Mary Chain, and even Oasis without making too obvious a reference.
Instead of sulking in his car blasting Songs: Ohia, as he did on “JM,” Hard Love shows Showalter out in the world, engaging with other people through music and, notably, through drugs. This is a peculiarly hedonistic album, one that will doubtless play well on the summer festival circuit. “I have the good drugs now,” he boasts in that Stereogum article, but they’re not especially potent sources of inspiration. Influenced by a mind-expanding episode at Boogie Festival in Australia, “On the Hill” bounds forward with a big, brash sound, but it never really goes anywhere. Instead, it just stays on that hill, blissed out and barely relatable if you weren’t at Boogie and on those good drugs with him.
More rewarding are the smaller moments, the songs that show Strand of Oaks morphing into a formidable rock band. “Quit It” is gloriously raw blues, “Rest of It” a trash-glam stomp. Both sound tossed off in the best way: less burdened with concepts and therefore freer, more fun. They represent a more relatable form of hedonism, with Showalter simply rocking the fuck out. That less-is-more quality extends to those moments when everything falls away except for one or two instruments: The title track builds to a climactic chorus, but instead of pushing everything into the red, Showalter removes everything but the drums. It redefines and redirects the anthem, turning it into an overture for the album that follows.
Perhaps the oddest aspect of Hard Love is how far it doesn’t stray from HEAL. Everything sounds weirdly familiar, as though Showalter hasn’t figured out how to move on from that breakthrough. He still makes the most of his murky production, despite bringing in French producer Nicolas Vernhes (Speedy Ortiz, Deerhunter) and multi-instrumentalist Jason Anderson. “Radio Kids” sounds a bit too similar to previous songs about adolescent alienation, and “Salt Brothers” leans too closely toward better cryptic anthems, most notably the apocalyptic “Sterling,” off 2010’s enduringly strange Pope Killdragon. Hard Love never really adds up to a particularly clear or bold statement; there are some strong songs and big moments, but very little that moves the story forward or develops that rich character. It’s a perfectly fine album by a guy who wants to be much more than perfectly fine.
