Cory Hanson’s carnal limbo…
Discrete, modest, it nearly went unnoticed. The album grazed by 2016 with the tips of its red hedges. A man immersed in crimson, a hand hiding his face. The cover for The Unborn Capitalist From Limbo exudes mystery – like its title, for that matter – and sums up what was (and still is today) one of the most beautiful albums the world has ever known. Melancholic without being over the top, Californian Cory Hanson manages to place himself between Ty Segall and Alex Turner without mimicking their art, stretching into an elegiac net of soft pop chords and tones that pierce us from all sides. “I wanted to make a record with as few moving parts as possible. I wanted the connection between instruments and song to be very clear. The arrangements: notes on a sheet, and the songs: guitar and voice. The only real additions were drums and bass. But that’s like animating a body with a pulse and movement. There were no studio embellishments save for some plate reverb.”, Cory confides in me.
A much-appreciated lull, in the middle of all this pestilential slump that recycles the 70s. This much too short album is timeless, cosy in a bubble that bobs ceaselessly but never pops, even when it reaches the firmament. But let’s go back to this capitalist from limbo, to that title that titillates our curiosity and can only have fallen victim to an innuendo or a metaphor fed by current events. To this question, Cory replies simply and maintains his fogginess. “That’s up to you. There’s no secret I’m keeping; it’s all there in plain sight if you ask me. The unborn, the limbo, and the capitalist. I’m more interested in what YOU think it’s about. I feel that on my end it’s pretty clear.” We don’t venture out into the terrain of resolution or the study of meaning. Even though the content is interesting, the musical thought process is even more so. Its form erases all thirst for meaning, but still leaves you with the dissection of the lyrics of this beautiful wandering.
“I had this feeling that I didn’t know how to express, that felt bigger than the music I was making. It was a dark feeling, but there was also light and hope. It needed to be expressed simply. I drew inspiration from that feeling- which pools from loss, grief, fear, violence, ignorance, frustration, love, courage, and movement. It’s also so much more than all of those feelings. It’s what keeps me making records, and I’m hoping its also what keeps people listening.” A full listening, of course. Ardent, intimate, nearing perfection listening. Listening that coils up in our loves and our sorrows, that shimmies to the rhythm of “Replica”, that wants to be celestial on “Ordinary People”, romantic on “Unborn Capitalist from Limbo” and country on “Arrival”.
Corry Hanson also plays with the moon, sick and violent with “Flu Moon” and “Violent Moon”; our ailing moon that lights up our ropey world, a world that tarnishes itself like its ivory robe. This pastoral album is an argument, a cry of alarm or a declaration of love. This album is a bit of everything at once. It takes care of our free will and conjures moralising interferences. It’s as if he were whispering sweet and eternal nothings in our ear.
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• “The Unborn Capatalist From Limbo” by Cory Hanson is available on Drag City / Modulor.
