Nearly everything I’ve read about 24-year-old Texas singer-songwriter MICAH P. HINSON spends more time pulping up his backstory than discussing his work. Lurid though his press-kit bio is (evil model girlfriend, drug abuse, jail time for prescription forgery, homeless at 19, yada yada yada), you don’t need it to appreciate his debut full-length. Micah P. Hinson and the Gospel of Progress (Overcoat) is at heart a breakup album, full of melancholy resignation and hopeful hindsight. Yet for all his insistence that things are OK now, there’s a quality in Hinson’s wavering, frequently multitracked baritone that suggests he’s just kidding himself. When he sings, “I still remember thinking / How lovely it could be / To hold you for eternity / Or at least until you fell asleep,” it sounds like he’s reliving the tale as he spins it. Dusky, shifting folk-rock arrangements–courtesy of the Earlies, a bicontinental chamber-pop outfit featuring some of the singer’s old buddies from Abilene–mirror this uncertainty, with a depth that’s sometimes spacious and austere and sometimes dense and orchestral. Many start with Hinson picking out a pretty acoustic guitar part; slowly the band heightens the tension behind him, using standard rock-band instrumentation along with some well-placed strings and horns; then it all fades away. Hinson performs solo here. –Peter Margasak
