Michael
Allen Potter:
June, 2004

William Hut
Versus the End of Fashion Park

(BananaParty)

williamhut.com

In June of 2001, a band called the Poor Rich Ones headlined a show at Café du Nord and capped off a near-perfect San Francisco night of independent music with a set of loud, shimmering, wounded pop from the west coast of Norway. In the interim, Poor Rich Ones produced two albums on the Five One, Inc. label, happy, happy, happy and Joe Maynard's Favorites, the latter containing a cover of a-ha's "Hunting High and Low" the likes of whose wry delivery hasn't been heard since the Revolting Cocks paid snide tribute to Rod Stewart with their version of "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?"

PRO's supposed former front man, William Hut, also created a stunning solo album, Road Star Doolittle (Five One, Inc.), that stripped down the already economical sound perfected after four albums and various EPs with a band whose work is often likened to Radiohead pre-Kid A. On his own, Hut's songwriting and aural aesthetic is more analogous to that of Michael Stipe and the earlier work of R.E.M. (with just a hint of Richard Butler's icy delivery and a touch of The Sundays' flair for literary composition thrown into the mix).

With Versus the End of Fashion Park, Hut fills in some of the acoustic negative space cultivated on Road Star with lush arrangements that utilize electric and baritone guitars, organs, accordions, and strings. Plaintive backing vocals are supplied by Sissy Wish with subtle and unobtrusive sequenced tracks, similar to those used to such great effect on David Gray's White Ladder, programmed by Bjørn Bunes. The exuberant percussion (seemingly composed on an old Underwood typewriter) and the deceptively breezy melody of "Twin Town" conjure something akin to guilt if you happen to find yourself singing along with the chorus for the first time: "Scary shameful morning/The scary truth is dawning/In the twin town of Seattle/In a silent bedroom battle/I'm growing old."

Versus the End of Fashion Park is a beautiful collection of quiet anthems to unrequited and lost love. All songs seem to have been written in the solitude that can follow a night spent raging into the darkness of early autumn or the dead of winter. Lyrics like, "There are many ways to talk/When you're around/Actually you're quite funny/And I'm shy," from "I remember, late December" sound like drunken confessions scrawled on cocktail napkins and set to music upon rediscovery. I thank my lucky stars almost daily that I was able to see the Poor Rich Ones before their alleged disbanding, but look forward to anything and everything that William Hut will ever record. Until then, Versus the End of Fashion Park and its stunning, yet unassuming, predecessor are not to be missed.

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