Photo by Jonny Vu
Review: Hughes flies high with long-awaited self-titled album
Benji Straker moves mountains with Hughes’ debut LP.
Benji Straker’s journey as Hughes dates back more than a decade. When the Yellowknife band member set about crafting his group’s debut self-titled LP, he reached back in time to cultivate a sonic and thematic trek that snaps and crackles like a rubber band. Hughes, a 10-track collection of mood-based work, leaves a significant imprint on the brain. As Straker weaves between love and loss, sewing together various swatches of human connective tissue, his voice evokes the classic giants of folk music (think: somewhere in the realm of Gordon Lightfoot) while needling something wholly his own.
“Over the past year, Hughes has grown from a solo singer-songwriter project into a full band, and that evolution shaped the sound of this album,” Straker says in press materials. “At its core, this album is about family, friendship, and the places that shape us – I think there’s something in it that any listener can connect with.”
Hughes opens with a 1-2 sucker punch of “Despite the Distance” and “Passerby,” a pitter-patter duo that primes the listener on the musical scope of the record. “I carry all these memories, forever to replay,” Straker sings on the former, before unraveling a potent stanza about the passage of time and merciless change. The band’s debut is best described as dark and brooding, inviting the listener into a stormy whirlwind, also evidenced by such essentials as “Day Trippin’,” “Only Forgotten,” and “Halfway There.” Straker’s voice pierces the pitch-black darkness that nearly swallows him whole. Each instrumental choice is like sending a flare cascading across the midnight sky. There’s both a delicate and sinewy quality to the work that grips you and doesn’t let go, not until long after the closing number “The Cabin,” a collab with Shea Alain, vanishes into mist.
Straker gathers memories together in mystical fashion. “She was gone / You were left on your own,” he sings on the orb-like “Idaho” performance. “Fifty years now, no one to call home / Open road, where will you go, stick to the places you know.” That longing and regret leave faint traces all over the place, dusting the album with suffocating wistfulness that clogs the air. They say, things happen for a reason, and that certainly applies to the album-making process. Hughes could not have been made even five years ago. Straker needed that time to further marinate his work and let it speak to him on a deeply resonant level. Thankfully, it arrives now when art means more than life itself.
