It would seem that Micah P Hinson is a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He also gives the impression of a man who could make Willie Nelson seem like a spring chicken, with his deep, rasping singing voice, even if he is yet to exit his thirties. Twinned with his rootsy and mournful tunes, however, Micah’s presence is a fine accompaniment in the early hours, on an album whose quality doesn’t once betray that it was recorded in a single 24 hour stretch.
When I Shoot at You with Arrows, I Will Shoot to Destroy You is not only one of the finest album titles so far in 2018, it is also a disc that contains more than its fair share of similarly entertainingly-named songs. Opening with “I Am Looking for the Truth, Not a Knife in the Back”, the Texas-born troubadour starts as he means to go on, in a brooding and down-tempo manner. He occasionally picks up the tempo, particularly on “Small Spaces” and the almost danceable “The Sleep Of The Damned”, but in the main, this is a collection of tunes that will have admirers of artists such as grunge bluesman Mark Lanegan and Swans’ Michael Gira’s solo work hitting the play button again and again. That said, “Fuck Your Wisdom” and “My Blood Will Call Out to You from the Ground” are not the misery-fests that their titles suggest, even if they do betray a certain mournful regret.
The final track, “The Skulls of Christ”, takes a different tack with insistent but half-heard sampled voices that finally fade out in an eddy of feedback, before an eerie choir brings things to a conclusion. Indeed, When I Shoot at You... may be best saved for certain moods, but when you’re in the right frame of mind, it’s just the ticket.
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