Tell Me Your Story

New album for 2026.

"I have been onboard with J.M. Hart's music from the first album. I've even written liner notes for him before, for the beautiful Turned Around cassette. It began when he was kind enough to invite me on his old podcast to yap about the Grateful Dead and music in general. In my mind, reciprocation is the soul of the game in underground music, so I returned the favor by buying his first proper album, Sunken Road. Was it digital or a lathe cut record? I'll have to dig in the shelf. Either way, listening to it turned out to not be any kind of DIY artist-to-artist obligation, but an experience I wished I had gotten to sooner. J.M. came out of the gate with songs full of inward insight and outward wisdom, earned and made richer by the fact that he began his journey as a recording artist later in life than average. That hasn't changed at all across his subsequent releases; if anything it has deepened significantly. What has changed is the production, the melodic and rhythmic sensibility. With each album J.M. has widened his sonic palette, growing from minimal folk to expansive zones of rock and psychedelia. The pursuit of new sounds has run even farther on his latest effort, Headwaters. I love the album title, are Headwaters where everything starts, or are they just waters that real Heads want to dip themselves in? Seems like the latter here - this is an album where the artist's musical ideas have arrived and found fleshed-out forms, forms that true Heads will recognize. Skronked out guitar solos, layers of effects, gentle electric piano and mellotron tones, big arrangements. The most notable, or most far-out, development is "Marcus Mulcahey", a bouncy bop that recalls "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" in structure and sound. JM let me know he was "chasing that bass tone", maybe he caught it, even though the man who coined it is famously on the run. A tune like "Debris (Falling From The Black)" takes an opposite approach, dueling guitars with distortion and long sustain providing an almost ambient bed for the heart-broken, hard felt lyrics. The ethereal "Can You Keep Up?" combines a sparse, humble melody with a completely washed out synth-noise outro.

Following J.M. Hart's music - the songwriting itself, the poetry, and the growing comfort with the universe of tools available in a home studio - has been like climbing down the tip of an iceberg then diving below the surface to come to understand the reality of its mass. The writing has become ever more personal and specific, a fearless and clear eyed look at the self and at the wide world around us, pulling fewer punches with each subsequent record. The musical universe has expanded to encompass intimate spaces, bluegrass runs and twirling fractals of lysergic tone. The only question is where J.M. Hart will take his project next, and you can be sure he is already mapping out the path."

Josh Moss, Portland, Oregon, 7/10/2026