Album Review: Eraserland by Strand of Oaks

Timothy Showalter's decade-plus career as Strand of Oaks teeters on an empirical belief that maybe there are no lines between art and life at all. His towering, synth-infused rock anthems and solemn guitar-and-voice meditations relay his experience in plain language: his adolescence in the small Indiana town of Goshen, his musical heroes, his fears and self-loathing, the messy emotional goulash of love and marriage. His rocker's distillation of Henry James' position--that "A novel is in its broadest definition a personal, a direct impression of life"--fuses a bold shoegaze and heartland-rock aesthetic with the lyrical posture of modern confessionalists like Mount Eerie and Margo Price.

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"The scene isn't my scene anymore" croons Tim Showalter on Eraserland's inaugural track and lead single "Weird Ways. " It's a sentiment that anybody with a rearview mirror can relate to, and as inward-looking as his Strand of Oaks project has been over the last decade, Showalter has rarely sounded as self-referential as he does on the band's seventh full-length effort. After the release of 2017's high-octane Hard Love and the birth of his son, Strand of Oaks drifted apart -- Showalter parses through the aftermath in great detail on the bruising Crazy Horse-meets-the Clash dub-rocker "Moon Landing," which features a smoldering guest solo from Jason Isbell.

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