Hollow Ground by Cut Worms

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.