Album Review: Strand Of Oaks - Hard Love

Fifth album from Philadelphian Tim Showalter — aka Strand Of Oaks — opens with the impassioned Springsteen-esque title track, anchoring him firmly in groove-laden rock realms after an early career flecked with folk.

Showalter looks like a biker but emotes like a poet, and it's another intensely personal affair, which aside from nostalgic anthem Radio Kids, deals mostly with reckless hedonism and its varying repercussions — especially epic soundscape On The Hill, the yearning Salt Brothers and the catchy-as-fuck Rest Of It — and closing superbly with droney eight-minute psych-out Taking Acid & Talking To My Brother.