PAINTER FINGERS ARCHIVE

This record from Texas songwriter and teacher Travis Charles Hagan grabbed me from the very first notes, and with every track it reveals new delights. Hagan has a deeply accessible vocal style, a killer ear for arrangement, and a talent for building instantly memorable songs. He veers between singing absolutely massive hooks and a disaffected rap delivery that is wildly endearing, all over airtight grooves and instrumental arrangements that are both well played and brilliantly mixed. Dear Presence explores the conflict between the grind and the good life, something of a work-life balance concept album. Every track is single material, deeply beautiful, effortlessly catchy - a staggering accomplishment.

SOUNDS LIKE: if John Frusciante and Ed Robertson got ahold of some overlooked beats from a TLC album, and then handed the results off to Jonathan Coulton with instructions to create a defiant-but-melancholy document of what it feels like to be a working American in the 2020s.

FAVORITE TRACK: "Best Laid Plans (Thrown Together)" is a mind-blowing production. The rolling folk guitar loop, the driving groove, the piercing electric guitar that jumps in, somehow both surprising and sounding like nothing else could've happened in that moment, the compelling but compact idea of the chorus - "some of the best laid plans are just thrown together"

THREE FAVORITE MOMENTS:

• The chorus in "What's The Rush?" is stadium fare

• The guitar solo in "Another Day Off The Calendar"

• The lead guitar line coming in about 30 seconds into "Five Minutes of Peace"