Today’s Americana UK first play comes from Phil Hooley’s third album Everything We’ll Ever Need which was again produced in Nashville by Justin Johnson. Phil’s vocal and guitar is handsomely supported by a host of top Nashville session players and Phil’s own love of songwriters such as Guy Clark, Nick Lowe and Bob Dylan is also evident in the delivery of his songs. which range across folk, old-west style and the blues with a little soul on the side. It even includes an ode to a famous dessert invented in Phil’s native North of England: “The real oddity on the album for me is Sticky Toffee Pudding, which I’ve been playing at my live shows for a while, and has proved to be a cheery end to concerts after all the more serious stuff! Strangely it’s the most requested song at the merch table, so I felt duty bound put it out, as a sort of bonus track at the end of the album.”
By contrast, today’s song is far more serious and sits at the heart of the album’s concerns. As Phil Hooley told Americana UK: “My view of the world, probably like most other people’s, is coloured by what is fed to us via TV, radio, social media, internet and more recently, AI. What is presented to us seems to be a concoction of reality, fiction, opinion, bias and lies. On a daily basis we see absolute horror, genocide, famine, lies presented as truths, alongside the portrayal of perfect lives, glamorous people, pompous ritual and displays of military might. In a world where some people are wealthy enough to buy whole countries while others cannot afford to eat, it is difficult to understand how we got to this point. “Hope Street” is a reflection of my thoughts on the situation. Social media, the modern day Pandora’s Box, thrives on the creation of outrage, and has made it easy to trade insults and spread division. Truths are blurred. Meanwhile the rest of us, and I would like to think the majority of human beings, are trying to find a way to rationalise all this, or ignore it completely, or make up our own reality. We continue our lives in the hope that sanity will prevail. ‘the fruit still ripens on the poison vine, but doesn’t taste so sweet.'”
