The muse descends in many different ways, and the motivation you have been searching for can arrive in all manner of different ways. For The Hill and their (or should I say his, as the project is the sonic vehicle for the music of Jon Kowit) new album, Noble Station, it was the writing of the windswept, emotive, and slightly Dylan-esque single, “Let This Storm Pass” that seemed to open the creative floodgates. And why wouldn’t it? As a listener, it is hard to reach the end of the track and not want to know more. As a music maker, similarly,I certain that it would have been impossible not to see this as unfinished business.
And so Noble Station started to come to life.
“Felt,” which opens the album, eases us into the band’s deft blends of rock and country, Americana and folk. A gentle, balladic track cocooned in increasingly lovely textures, subtle beats, and drifting sonics, it oozes a wonderful whistfulness and feelings of wanderlust. And its theme of leaving town, getting out into the big, wide world, is picked up in “See You There” and its gracious grooves.
“Any Old Time” feels as if it could have been nestled into the middle of Neil Young’s Harvest Moon album, and that is, in my world, about as high an accolade as you could hope for, “Seconds Off” is Petty-esque rock and roll (also the highest accolade…I know, its a conundrum) and “Arrival” rounds things off with, perhaps the perfect footnote to the themes of travel and drifting and lonesome adventure that runs through the album, a reminder that you will find yourself exactly where you need to be, when the time is right. Be patient.
Not only an album of incredible music but one full of gentle wisdom too. We all need guidance from time to time, and Noble Station is full of it; all you have to do is bend in an ear and listen.
