Monsters in the Deep

Following the release of his 2014 debut album War, Peace and Diplomacy (Fierce Panda), Family Tree release Tom Hickox’s new album, Monsters in the Deep. The album is a major artistic leap. Both lyrically and musically, the songs see Hickox stretching out and fully availing himself of the possibilities presented by each song. This time around, Hickox held back from making the piano the prominent instrument on the album. Together with his life-long friend and co-producer Chris Hill, he played with different ways of presenting the songs. Time and again, it is an approach that brings out the best in Hickox: the fin de siecle consolation chorus of Collect all the Empties ; the keening exhortations of Mannequin Heart which seem to locate an exquisite equidistant point between Tilt-era Scott Walker and a lost David Lynch soundtrack of the same period.