444 by hemlock

hemlock's Chicago-based full-band album '444' releases independently on October 11, 2024.

'444' - hemlock's second release of the year, following mini-album 'amen!' - is entirely comprised of reimagined selects from songwriter Carolina Chauffe's ongoing, twelve-year song-a-day-for-a-month phone-fi folk project.

The twelve songs that make up this angel number album have all been previously released over the past five years by front-person Chauffe as solo iPhone recordings. Now, a "best of, so far", ‘444’ manifests as a curated archive of this handful of tracks, chosen among hundreds, re-contextualized and recaptured in a collaborative, mostly-live, two-day-long, intensive studio session at In The Pocket in Chicago. Crafted with audible urgency and sharp-edged dedication, and brought to life with a beloved midwestern band featuring all-stars Bailey Minzenberger, Andy "Red" PK, and Jack Henry (Chicago music scene bastions and members of Friko, Free Range, Red PK) as the backbone and the beating heart.

Steeped in intention and intensity, shaken not stirred, a message in a bottle, documented the week before Chauffe moved away from their home in Chicago and settled into the open road.

Pushed to a more raucous place than ever before, with full trust and autonomy, this is hemlock in a sonic horizon expanded - sometimes serrated, jagged, yet still so tender. Inside-out, heart on its sleeve, full of hope, beyond folk.

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Only three seconds into 444, there is a small miracle: from the distant sound of wildlife chirping and cooing, one bird’s call rings out, perfectly in-time with the third note of Carolina Chauffe’s acoustic guitar. It’s one of the subtlest of 444’s moments of magic; for this, it’s also the most emblematic of the humble, holistic nature of Chauffe’s work as hemlock.

“Day One,” like the rest of 444, is a marvel of composited proximities, from its disarmingly simple two lines (“Red-winged blackbird by the lake / It is strange to be, but today feels okay”) which are stretched and layered to feel expansive, to the spacious production that overlays a distant piano line over close-mic’d guitar.

Those familiar with hemlock’s work will recognize this song as the opening track of 2019’s February; like the other eleven songs that make up 444, it was pulled from the extensive archive of songs that Chauffe has written and recorded on their phone as part of their song-a-day-for-a-month for the past five years. 444 carefully selects a set of twelve songs from this trove, reimaging and reframing them for a full band (Chicago scene mainstays Andy PK, Bailey Minzenberger, and Jack Henry); the result is an album of searching, sun-beaten folk rock that encompasses the farthest reaches of hemlock’s sound and folds a half-decade of observations and fleeting encounters into a cohesive, hypnotic whole.

Chauffe’s initial home recordings suggest an inordinately talented songwriter with a seemingly effortless sense of melody and arrangement, and on 444, the promise is fulfilled, and the transformations are revelatory. Minzenberger and Henry’s rhythm section is slyly groovy and blissfully in the pocket, and PK ornaments these songs with delicate, restrained guitar work and harmonies. The sturdiness of such an airtight band pushes Chauffe to unprecedented intensity, like on the propulsive “Drive & Drive”: new is a smokiness to Chauffe’s twang that occasionally recalls mid-career Lucinda Williams, and the coda layers their voice until a cloud of feedback is left in the song’s wake.

Elsewhere, on the elliptical “Deja Vu,” Chauffe cycles unsteadily through their surroundings, returning to a domestic scene—cutting radishes—as a token of permanence. They shuffle over an anxious waltz that wouldn’t sound out of place on an American Analog Set record, and its brisk, vaguely manic swing seems to extend beyond its short 1:37-minute runtime. “Hundred-Headed Woman” conjures a weightless darkness that belies the simplicity of its construction: although the song is built of familiar elements of indie rock—deep bass, muffled drums, a few guitar drones—the subtlety and precision of the performances is entirely immersive.

hemlock’s affiliation and friendship with ambient folk project Lomelda (Hannah Read) is unsurprising, and a helpful reference point for newcomers—both are from the deep American south and make a sort of hushed, vulnerable Americana. 444 quickly follows this spring’s amen!, which was recorded and produced in Silsbee, TX at Read’s de-facto headquarters. And while Read’s influence is detectable, what’s notable about hemlock’s two releases this year—recorded in different states with different communities—is that their succession emphasizes how much hemlock sounds utterly like themselves. Their songs of terrestrial wonder are pockmarked with specifics (“last year when I had COVID on tour in panhandle Florida / you ordered yourself some toothpaste and / Ben and Jerry’s ice cream”) that give the loftiest moments of abstraction an immediate warmth.

On 444, Chauffe’s demeanor most directly recalls the unshowy, regular-guy existentialism of someone like John Prine. The dogged practice of the a-song-a-day-for-a-month project underlines a devotional quality in hemlock’s writing, which is on full display here. In the middle of “Lake Martin,” Chauffe places an archetypically hemlockian line: a folksy, colloquial loop of nondualism that the rest of the album seems to radiate around: “Now the waxing moon’s concerto / dragonflies buzz in crescendo / dancing, dining on mosquitos / as the ‘squitos dine on me.” Yes, 444 is a pivotal moment in hemlock’s trajectory as an artist, but their music suggests it is also simply another token in the continuous practice of being alive.

-Asher White

swamp-raised, phone-fi alt-folk

anchors in chi / atx / louisiana, but more often on the road

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hemlocksounds@gmail.com

(heart archive)

xo,
carolina

hemlocksounds.com
betweenthelinas.substack.com
carolinachauffe.com