Hollow Hand - Ancestral Lands (2020) Hi-Res

Hollow Hand’s debut LP, Ancestral Lands, is the consummate time-travel companion. Anyone game for getting deliciously lost in a strange landscape will reel with the twists and turns of Max Kinghorn-Mills’ authorship, as he applies his vision to the kind of properly coherent (and unilaterally enjoyable) body of songs possessing that rare quality: longterm listenability.

Kinghorn-Mills’ languid vocal stylings flower with harmonies to spirit you away with a parade of shimmering progressive/psych-folk. His knack for rendering fleshed-out compositions that seem ready to curl up like enormous cats in a canonical audio library of great songs that truly belong together (even more so because of near-imperceptible realtime hiccups throughout the album) will compel even the surliest doubting Thomas.

The album’s leading track, ‘Talisman‘ radiantly heralds the outset of a journey to wayfarers, while its successor, ‘Chariot‘ is a dreamily uninhibited number harkening back to the nebulous time signatures of early 70’s medieval folk rock outfits like Rennaisance and Pentangle. Touching upon the earthly conundrum of love relationships, ‘Later You’ll Know‘ chronicles doomed intimacy- ‘both of you wondering what later you’ll know/ both of you chasing what the other runs from-‘ while ‘Love and Games’ boasts a ear-catching instrumental section pivoting around rhythmic guitar measures sourced from Kinghorn-Mills’ “first soppy old guitar demo [he] recorded one hilariously miserable grey afternoon in front of a rain drenched window,” fumblings and all. ‘City of Gold‘ toys lyrically with the allegorical everyman questing for an unattainable Kubla-Khan and ‘Farewell‘ scrappily makes its way through a spacious realm of wailing synths. Winding down, ‘Saturnalia‘ examines bittersweet reunions between old friends and finally, ‘Phantasmagoria‘ dramatically dovetails Hollow Hand’s opus with a surreal outro. Then you listen to the whole damn thing over again because it’s ingenious.

Having been bewitched by ‘Chariot‘ when Kinghorn-Mills released it as a single earlier this year, it was with baited breath that I set out to piece together more clues about this limpid-eyed puck, who’s been sneezing for weeks on end as a result of an ancient Autumn rite: there’s a noxious burnpile of dead leaves and tree limbs behind his home.