<a href="http://www.hiddenshoal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Whats-The-Story-With-This-Hole-Cover-Art-1000px.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium 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="300" height="300" /></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 (DrAlienSmith, 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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