Iowa music is nothing if not eclectic. Put a track by early ’90s prog-punkers Fetal Pig side-by-side with something spawned in the late ’90s by genre-less ramblers Why Make Clocks, for example. You’d be forgiven for not being aware that both acts were fronted by Des Moines’ Sump Pump Records maestro Dan Hutchinson.
And if you’re a bit newer on the scene, and you were a fan of Fetal Pig and aware of Hutchinson’s involvement with from Bellyard — the new project from Why Make Clocks alums Hutchison, Boonie Boone and Will Tarbox — but hadn’t yet dived into the Why Make Clocks back catalog, you’d be forgiven if your first reaction to hearing it the new album (out Jan. 29) was, “Wtf is this?!”
At least, I hope I’ll be forgiven. Because that phrase ran through my mind at least a dozen times over the course of my first couple of listens. It was never a negative reaction, but rather one of sheer wonder. It wouldn’t be wrong to refer to my experience as gobsmacked. And it hasn’t dulled.
I fancy myself difficult to surprise. But this album continues to catch me off-guard moment by moment, teasing, denying and ultimately superseding each expectation. It’s at once familiar and fresh, like a lost classic. Hutchinson’s warm voice has a nostalgic, off-kilter aesthetic, walking that Michael Stipean line between Kurt Cobain and Sebastian Bach — part visceral and raw, part achingly lovely.
The album kicks off with “Storm,” a dreamy 10-minute track that drives home the info in the band’s bio: “The partnership quickly picked up where it left off and new music emerged. Music that now favored a more lyrically optimistic and musically collaborative experimentalism.” The track, which adds fourth official band member Jason Parrish along with contributions from Nathan Emerson and Matt Jesson, sounds like a jam session with artists who have been together for decades, not a trio coming back to each other after a 14-year hiatus.
Each of the remaining five tracks shifts tone slightly, sometimes leaning into an Americana feel but never losing that undercurrent of exploration, either musically or lyrically. It sits at a musical crossroads frequented by the Meat Puppets, perhaps, and the trippier contemplations of the Grateful Dead. Calling it prog country would be hamfisted, perhaps, but not incorrect.
There’s a lot of sadness on this album, lyrically. But it never indulges itself in regret. It’s grounded instead in an aggressive optimism, a deft example of the rising philosophy of “hope punk” and various defiant joy movements.
“I finally put it to the page, in hopes I’d finally leave the cage behind,” Hutchinson sings in “Break the Spell,” the second track. And, on “The Red Light is Not Your Enemy,” the urgent, driving third offering, “Seems too strong to resist; but have you ever really even tried?”
These are tunes that play to every middle-aged anxiety, reminding Gen X that it’s OK to still be working toward something, to still be unsettled and unsatisfied. That seems like a trivial take, or perhaps even a self-serving one, I know. But it also feels like a necessary message for a generation that was forced to redefine growing up in a world that explicitly, even aggressively, has lacked security.
“I just want a slice of the ugly truth,” track four (“Ugly Truth”) insists: and that’s what this album feels like. Just a single slice of the truth that we face. It sits as an invitation. Are there others ready to add their own slice? I hope so.
This article was originally published in Little Village’s January 2024 issue.
