Hadnot Creek - 'Leaving'

If alt-country is the art of turning desolation into melody, Hadnot Creek’s 'Leaving' belongs in the genre’s permanent collection. The album sounds like it was tracked in an abandoned filling station at golden hour as drums echo in empty rooms, guitars twinkle like broken neon, and every lyric feels scrawled on the back of a grocery receipt. Yet there’s elegance in the ruin.

Sawrey’s songwriting orbits emptiness and the players around him treat silence as another instrument. 'It’s an Impossible World' rides a ghostly shuffle that never quite resolves, mirroring the song’s thesis that certainty is a luxury no one can afford. A few tracks later, 'Mama I’m So Sorry' strips everything to voice, tremolo guitar, and the kind of apology that never finds the right mailbox. It’s devastating precisely because it refuses climax; the wound is too old to bleed.

Where many Americana records lean on nostalgia, 'Leaving' weaponises memory. 'Don’t Poke the Sleeping Bear' floats a carnival organ over a shuffling backbeat, turning a dad-ism into a warning that might just be self-directed. Meanwhile 'Witness' unspools like a sermon delivered from a barstool, drawing a line between passive observation and moral complicity. The fiddle that slips in halfway through feels less like ornamentation and more like a cracked church bell tolling for whoever will listen.

Sonically, producer and rotating bandmates keep the palette earthy but unpredictable. A stray Mellotron wafts through; elsewhere, a slide-guitar phrase stumbles into shoegaze territory before collapsing back into bourbon-soaked shuffle. These small experiments give the record its sly forward momentum even as the lyrics linger in rear-view mirrors.

When the final notes fade, 'Leaving' doesn’t suggest escapism so much as endurance, and somehow, that’s comfort enough. Hadnot Creek has crafted a collection that sits with the ache without trying to cure it, and in that patience lies its quiet power.