Cory Hanson – Pale Horse Rider
First bunny, now pale horse. Who will be revealed as a rider next?
[Video]
[6.11]
Ian Mathers: Hey, you should know: I’m going to talk about the death of a pet here, and it messed me up enough I absolutely understand if you want to skip this blurb. Just also know that I thoroughly loved “Pale Horse Rider” before what I’m about to describe, but I loved it, and needed it, even more after. I’d been listening to Pale Horse Rider and its title track a lot, trying to get a review together, when our cat very unexpectedly got very sick and died. The day we took her in to find out why she wasn’t her normal self (after a frantic overnight round of me calling vet hospital after vet hospital to find after endless waits on hold they were all sympathetic but absolutely could not see us) and then found out she couldn’t even come home with us… I had finally gone to sleep at about 9 am dreading the news, and when my wife called to tell me there was nothing we could do I misunderstood and thought they were about to put her to sleep, and the thought I hadn’t even properly said goodbye when they’d left the house felt like my mind was breaking. But there was time for me to go in and for us both to hold her as she went to sleep for the last time. After we got home my wife understandably couldn’t do much but sit on the couch and sob. My own emotions flipped the other way, I was practically running around the apartment trying to balance the urge to remove anything that she (or I) might see the next day that would drive us back to despair by reminding us of her death with the urge not to remove everything because waking up and feeling like she’d never been here at all might have been worse. When I finally burned out and sat down, I apologized to my wife and asked if it would be okay to play this song, about the comfort of mortality but simultaneously a howl against the brute fact of it. The song I’d had in my head since we’d walked out of the hospital through too many people who knew why we’d come there and looked at us with sympathy (they let you do all the payment etc. in advance, so once it’s over you can just walk out of the building without talking to anyone), fighting the urge to run past them into the stunning heat and light of an August afternoon.
[10]
Oliver Maier: Like much of what I’ve heard from Hanson’s primary hustle Wand, “Pale Horse Rider” is monumentally pleasant in sound — a little “Sunday Morning” via Bonny Light Horseman — but maybe not as poignant as it dreams of being. It’s hardly a failure: there is something compellingly morbid to the affectionate way Hanson sings about death, and his imagery is poetically rendered. In general, though, existential folk either sews itself into your bones or leaves little of an impression, and I know which side of the fence I’m on.
[6]
Iain Mew: There are a couple of neat moments of dynamic change with spaces and backing vocals. Otherwise, from the first moment of the strings scraping in it moves with the creeping inevitability of death. Which I think is a compliment in this case?
[6]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Does not so much engage with death as waltz unaware into its arms — it feels obvious to describe this as languid, and there isn’t really a layer of guile hiding beneath that languor. And yet I am drawn to its dream-time motions, its wisdom without wit. Maybe I just like the fiddle.
[6]
John S. Quinn-Puerta: This sounds like something my dad would pull out of his aging LP collection, at home next to The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band or Neil Young. The low register fiddle in the first few bars sets up the entry of what sounds like pedal steel perfectly. The close harmonies are cribbed from Trio in the best way, checking all my personal nostalgia boxes. While Hanson’s papery vocals are off-putting at the start, as the subject becomes clear, the wavering fits perfectly.
[9]
Juana Giaimo: I’m having a hard time enjoying some of the decisions in this song. I first thought it was just his voice, but the production doesn’t seem to fit either. The break halfway through the song with those ghostly backing vocals comes out funny, and the orchestral build up towards the end makes an already sluggish song even heavier. I understand ghostly and heavy is probably what he was aiming for in a song about death, but the excess of ornamentation makes it seem the vocals – -frail, but as if he was imposing it — belong to a different song. Well, I guess maybe it is just his voice. (In fact, I think Jenny Lewis would do a pretty good job singing this.)
[4]
Alfred Soto: I left the room for water, came back three minutes later, and Cory Hanson was still mewling about horses and hay and shit. Pale rider, take me away.
[1]
Nortey Dowuona: This is gorgeous. Cory also REALLY can’t sing but that is fine, the lilting guitar line more than makes up for that. Ride on, pale horse rider, but stay the hell away from me.
[8]
Edward Okulicz: There’s personifying death, and then there’s this, which is personifying death and then smothering him with a pillow and a fiddle. It’s too pleasant and dreamy for its own good.
[5]
A [1] and a [10]. Love to see it.
Beautiful words, Ian. I’m so sorry for your loss and I’m glad this song could help you comfort you.
Thanks Juana!