Cantinero

Better for the Metaphor

Talk to British Singer/songwriter and composer Chris Hicken long enough and you might hear him make reference to a Charles Darwin exhibit he's seen in New York, recommend a documentary about Freud's grandson Edward Bernays, or recall a conversation he's had with his wife about the late Republican political strategist Lee Atwater. So it's not surprising that his thoughtful, informed reflections find their way into the songs on his new album, Better for the Metaphor a literate, lovingly crafted pop affair that displays Hicken's talent for keenly observed insights about the complicated times in which we live.

I do feel very passionate about politics and what's going on in the world right now, Hicken says.And I think the subject matter on the album reflects that, but I dont like it when a song points its finger at me. I'm interested when a someone puts forward an observation without ramming their conclusion down my throat. I mean, lets face it; there aren't black and white answers to most problems, but you can observe the problems and write passionately about them. With what's going on in the world, as an artist, how could you not write about it?

As a result, Better for the Metaphor offers Hicken's perceptive take on American sense of entitlement (Go Getter), the Bush administration's manufactured culture of fear (Safe), the dangers of trumpeting one's ideology (My House), the societal acceptance of anorexia (Thinner), and even a sing-songy ditty about using anti-depressants to make it all go away (Medicated). It's food for thought, but it goes down easy thanks to Hicken's prodigious gift for melody (practically a birthright for a British singer-songwriter). I do have an incredible sweet tooth for melody, he says. So I wanted to make the tunes poppy and catchy and accessible so that you can sing along without really knowing what the song is about'

To do it, Hicken, who produced the album himself, layers his expressive, soulful tenor atop a rich blend of acoustic and Spanish guitars, piano, strings, bassoon, and random snatches of sound he's been collecting since he began to write the album in August of 2005 in upstate New York, where he moved in 2006 after 10 years of living in Manhattan. I wrote most of it in a log cabin in the middle of a 200-acre preserve next to Minnewaska State Park, Hicken says. It was like being in a sweat lodge; it just came pouring out of me. He recorded the album in an equally isolated place: Tinkle Tone Studios, which Hicken helped to build on 12 acres of land in the Hudson River Valley area of Rhinecliff. In both instances I was surrounded by nature, Hicken says. It was just splendid isolation and really enabled me to focus in a way that I'd never been able to before.

That rural environment is a far cry from the urban setting of his East Village apartment where Hicken recorded his debut album, the critically well-received Championship Boxing, which was released by Artemis Records in 2004. That album a combination of live instrumentation and subtle electronic textures that Britain's music bible Q magazine called a winning fusion of strummed acoustics and brawny ballads with deliciously poignant lyrics documented what Hicken considers a dynamic shift in my life. Or as one reviewer put it: Championship Boxing is about the pursuit of a dream, and what to do with the rest of your life when the dream dissolves.

For Hicken, that dream was to be a rock star. A native of Birmingham, England, he had already paid his dues as a veteran of several unsigned bands after arriving in America in 1993 with a pop-rock group called Bigmouth. When Bigmouth dissolved, Hicken spent seven years working as a bartender (hence the moniker Cantinero, a nickname bestowed on him by a Spanish co-worker) before deciding to give music another try at the urging of a friend, Michael Chambers (now his manager), a drummer who also happened to be a co-owner of premier indie label Artemis Records.

I was really in a hole when I wrote that first album, Hicken says. My old man had died. I wasn't going to be rock star. It was just one of those moments when if you've defined yourself by this one thing, and you no longer believed in that thing, it's like, who are you? Who are you when those things disappear I cleaned house, got a dog, and life just changed.

It changed for the better, judging by the less confessional tone of Better for the Metaphor. The new album, which captures many moods with its stylistic variety, is less personal that its predecessor. There's me in it, he says, but not me hashing things out. It's just me observing. Observing and being passionate enough about something to write about it.