<a href="http://www.hiddenshoal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Whats-The-Story-With-This-Hole-Cover-Art-1000px.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-15057" src="http://www.hiddenshoal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Whats-The-Story-With-This-Hole-Cover-Art-1000px-300x300.jpg" alt="What's The Story With This Hole?" width="273" height="273" /></a>We're excited to announce the official release of <a title="Craig Hallsworth" href="http://www.hiddenshoal.com/project/craig-hallsworth/">Craig Hallsworth</a>'s brilliant new album <em>What's The Story With This Hole?</em>. The album is available now as a <a title="CD" href="https://craighallsworth.bandcamp.com/album/whats-the-story-with-this-hole" target="_blank">limited edition CD</a> and in digital format via <a title="BandCamp" href="https://craighallsworth.bandcamp.com/album/whats-the-story-with-this-hole" target="_blank">BandCamp</a>, iTunes, Spotify and all the other other usual suspects.

With over 30 years of songwriting experience under his belt, Craig Hallsworth makes <em>What’s The Story With This Hole?</em> feel effortless yet boundless. Recorded and produced with long-time collaborator Al Smith (<a title="DrAlienSmith" href="http://www.hiddenshoal.com/project/draliensmith/">DrAlienSmith</a>, Bergerk Studios), the album represents the most musically developed and fully realised recording the pair have delivered to date. On the surface, these are perfectly composed and innately melodic pop/rock songs, with Hallsworth’s guitars alternately shimmering and snarling around his unmistakably keening vocals. The real magic, however, lies a little concealed; songs often end up somewhere very different from where they started, and Hallsworth’s often surreal lyrical excursions act in striking counterpoint to the music.

It’s this juxtaposition that makes <em>What’s The Story With This Hole?</em> so special – musically rich and familiar sounds taken into unrelated narrative territories. In Hallsworth’s own words, <em>“To me, the mysterious undecidability in the words plays a crucial part in the overall experience of the songs, making them events of sense and sensation. It isn’t so much that I consider the lyrics to be poetry, but I think a sense of poetry would be useful in approaching these songs.”</em>

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