Brighton is south of London, and a quick train in and out gets you there. Max Kinghorn-Mills remembers moving there, mentally prepared for leaving home after finishing his second album as Hollow Hand in a flat in Farnham. It was in October of 2017, and the beach became cold and dark in late afternoon. “There were so few hours of light during the day”, he recalled, “that time itself felt scarce in a way it never had before”. As he sings on ‘Weatherman’ from 2024’s “Your Own Adventure”, “Half of me is sitting here waiting for God / and half of me is writing songs / I know a boy who’s losing his mind / but he only wants to get it back / even the grey is giving to blue but thunder is in the sky”.
They had spent a day looking for flats and found the beach. “We recorded the sea and came back”, he said. “We knew that we needed to fade our new life into the end of that chapter. So, the album finishes with the drums fading out and Brighton fading in. That wasn’t planned. It just seemed like a good idea at the time”.
You make the best of what you have at your disposal. You cherish the time because you know there is so little of it to make something happen. Kinghorn-Mills has never really been able to afford to get a studio. “We recorded the first album (“Ancestral Lands”) in a shack turned studio in my dad’s backyard. The second (“Star Chamber”) in a humble flat in Farnham. I didn’t know what I was doing, but had Tom Andrews and Chris Banner as producers. Then the third (“Your Own Adventure”) in a still humble flat, though I knew a bit more about what I’m doing”.
It was in the flat in Hove, Brighton that he made “Your Own Adventure” – making music with Ollie Newton setting up to record drums in the front room while trying to be good neighbours. “We were above a shop, and though we were very loud, people didn’t mind us recording in there. And then we got this letter – I still need to frame it – and it’s the lady next door saying how pleased she is that we are musicians recording at home, but could we please stop playing drums”.
‘A World Outside’ is one of the songs from that flat, but to Kinghorn-Mills, it reminded him of being secluded in the rickety shack at his dad’s. “My dad was always supportive”, he said, “and stayed out of our way the majority of the time. But the door wouldn’t stay shut. I’ve got memories of Chris lying down, smoking and holding onto this rope so that the door didn’t swing open. It was quite a poetic thing. We had a lot of recordings of the ambience of the birds in the garden. On that song, it’s got a recording of my dad actually outside as parts of the rain were coming through”.
He was a big D’Angelo fan at the time, which you can hear on the song to finish the album, ‘Land of the Free’. They recorded all of Chris’ drums onto a Tascam tape deck. “It’s all very crunchy and has a lot of personality, but not much you can do with it after you’ve decided to do it that way”.
“Your Own Adventure” is such an apt, descriptive title for Hollow Hand’s third album, the making of which had been an adventure from the beginning, perhaps similar to one of those RPG games that Kinghorn-Mills immerses himself in from time to time. The independent spirit that propels the creative process is also one that gave birth to the album. “The attitude of the album is definitely DIY,” he said. “It’s about not needing to rely on anyone. No one has any answers for you. You are your own boss, and it’s down to you, your own adventure”.
He stayed in the flat with his girlfriend, Holly Macve, who can be heard on acoustic guitar and background vocals. Max spent as many days doing part-time work as was necessary to pay the rent. Every spare bit of time was used either writing songs or down on the beach. “It wasn’t always an easy process,” he said. “Sometimes it’s difficult concentrating; we were also making her album (“Golden Eagle”) down there. As in one of the songs from “YOA”, it was “One last summer, all that remains / now that you’ve done it – well you just might do it again / And you, you held me like the Holy Ghost / Ooh, we fell straight down like dominoes / Now you know it’s over but I feel like another man”.
“Holly sang a lot on that album”, he said, while marvelling at her vocals and songwriting ability. “You should listen to her album, “Not the Girl,” which is the title song. “I’m not the girl that I once was / And I’ll never be that girl again / You once said you were sorry / For not trusting anybody / And now I understand where you come from”.
On “Your Own Adventure”, Kinghorn-Mills displays a protean approach to songwriting. Sometimes, you wonder if it is the same person singing lead. “I know what you mean,” he offers. “Some musicians inhabit a space, and they’ll want to stick to one genre. But I don’t want to just do one thing, and sometimes my focus will change during the process. Maybe it’s because I took longer than a year to make the record, and I went through lots of different phases and points of interest.”
‘Jealous King’ and ‘Childhood Room’ are ballads, and he thinks they are the best songs on the album. In the latter, he romanticizes writing messages on the wall and notebooks with words to all the songs he’ll write one day. “I remember golden days / when we were only boys / And I traced the words upon my walls / of friends we left behind”. He is drawn to classic bands like Crosby Stills Nash & Young or The Byrds, and you can hear the influence in ‘Jealous King’ where he rails against men who believe they understand women: “The man with the master plan/rules this world with a sword in his hand / and I hope that you fall on it too”.
But he has no aversion to rocking out a bit as in a song about a lost friend, ‘Doomed to Roll’, or ‘Before Tomorrow’, which has that end-of-summer romance mystique: “Fading now / your long shadow in the sun / Return oblivion”. It’s the opening track, and he wishes a big synth part could have been added. “That song is a bit like something from The Cure, where you’ve got a huge angelic synthesizer. We have never played that one because they are just prohibitive, too difficult when there are not enough people on stage to play it out live.”
In 2018, Hollow Hand did a tour in America with Sam Evian and discovered that musicians like to do impromptu collaborations during a performance. “When Americans come over here and we play with them, there’s a sort of whole culture like, ‘Hey, man, get on stage. Let’s run this.’ And I have to say we don’t really do that over here. Maybe it’s confidence. I think it’s just a cultural thing in Nashville. Everyone’s sitting in, aren’t they? Someone will say this one is in G, and off we go, sort of thing”.
It’s not as if jamming requires the attenuation of what Hollow Hand and bands with people he knows normally do. It’s not that they can’t; they just don’t, that is, until the opportunity came to open shows for M.J. Lendeman on his tour of the UK. “That’s something that I’m really glad to have available because when we play gigs now, I’m always thinking, oh cool, how can we do something together? And then there’s Spencer Cullum (pedal steel player). He’s from Essex, but he’s living in Nashville. His day job is playing in big country bands, big pop singers like Miranda Lambert. Over here, we did some shows together in Brighton, and he’ll play in these tiny grassroots indie venues, and then go off playing with Whispering Bob in some stadium the next day.”
There is a new Hollow Hand album in the works for later in 2025. Asked what kind of music would be on it, the reply came back: “I guess I’m still figuring it out. But I imagine it will be similar to the last. There are no sea shanties on it, if that’s what you’re wondering”.
Actually, I was not wondering, but given his knack for eclecticism, why not? Online, you can find him playing a frenetic rocker called ‘Drinking with Judy’, which he is testing with audiences and may release as a single. The album it will be on has almost been put to bed.
“I have recorded everything – the beds, as they say – all the drums and bass. It’s just the three of us: Leo (Clark) playing bass, Ollie (Newton) drums, and I’m playing all the other stuff. In the past, I’ve rushed to get it done, and that never works out well, but for whatever reason, I’m in no hurry this time. It all got interrupted by the Lendeman tour. I’ve showed what we have to Spencer, and he might play on it, too”.
In terms of the aesthetic for the album, he is attempting to have a more unified approach. “I do want it to be a shorter statement”, he declared. “I’ve even ditched a song. It was the mood I’ve been in, and you just have to follow and trust your instincts. The goal is always to try and have less barriers in between you and the paper and just allow the stream of consciousness to flow. Someone like Dylan is obviously the master of that.”
It’s safe to say that ‘Drinking with Judy’ is not a contender for album title. Has Kinghorn-Mills chosen one as yet?
“I’m not sure yet”, he said. “There’s a place on the commute to get here, a stop called “Wish Road” that I see every day. That’s in my notebook. I like the way it sounds.”
