Hoover guitarist Alex Dunham releases home recordings

Your favorite guitarist’s favorite guitarist just delivered an album’s worth of home recordings

If there’s one positive thing to come out of Coronavirus lockdown its the re-emergence of the reclusive (well, actually just really busy) Alex Dunham. Its been 18 years since the Hoover/Regulator Watts/Radio Flyer/Abilene guitarist has made any new music available and in addition to posting daily clips to his Instagram he just dropped 7 songs to Bandcamp as way that “I could give something to everyone… It’s not much and probably doesn’t help anyone’s shit.....But it’s there if’n y’all want it.”

“Redlimes” cover by Alex Dunham

Dunham’s playing has always morphed stylistically from project to project while retaining a signature sound. These songs (written and recorded from 2003 to 2010) continue that trajectory as they show how he constructs a song when there’s no other players. On “Eight Belles” he takes the idea of rhythm guitar literally and uses a bouncy riff as an anchor for a restrained blues-y line and then the whole thing disintegrates into textured noise and barely discernible playing. Its obviously a home recording but its definitely not a demo for a band—nothing else is needed. That’s true of the whole set of songs. Each brings a little something different to the table: “No Longer” is probably the first time we’ve heard Alex sing rather than talk, growl or scream; “Interstate” brings pianos and field records, and“Redlimes” starts with a note that I swear sounds exactly like one of instrumental interludes from Regulator Watts’ Mecury CD (but the disk is int he car and I’m lazy) but goes in a different direction with reversed guitar sounds doing what the noise and rhythm pieces do elsewhere.

Stream the whole album below or download for free at Soundcloud.