[09.06] Whenever the sun would crack through the thunderheads and turn sheets of raindrops into a blinding deluge of broken glass, my grandmother would say that the devil was beating his wife with a silver chain. I always liked the expression for its amazing, terrifying imagery. After listening to Mike Andrews’ Hand On String a couple of times, the phrase bubbled to the surface of my memory. Like the imagery that accompanies it, it matched the tone of the album and reminded me how something melancholy can be so beautiful, how something so bright also can have its shadows.

It’s this masterful blending of seemingly disparate ingredients that Andrews executes so successfully. Several songs, such as “Just a Thought,” reference The Beatles or even Pink Floyd, but they are merely glancing in the bands’ general direction; understated elements of synth-and-echo-induced psychedelia, for example, run through much of the album. Many songs are simply structured, allowing Andrews’ delicate voice and masterful acoustic guitar work to shine; “See Me Plain” comes off like a slightly more hopeful Elliott Smith outtake, while “Through the Fog” is almost straight-up folk. Others take on different forms, eschewing pop arrangements for unusual combinations. Indeed, on “Orange Meet Lemon,” we even get into jazz territory, acoustic guitars, bass and piano flourishes dancing around each other in dizzy harmony. The album’s title track, though, is a standout: it begins as a cloud of AM radio fluff of yesteryear, set in waltz time, that, through the addition of female harmonies and clever layering, replaces all would-be cheesy balladeering with sincere dedication and the ever-present tear in the corner of the eye.

So where did this talent come from? Why haven’t you heard of him before? Chances are that you have heard his handiwork before, perhaps quite a bit of it. A prolific composer, musician and producer, his credits include collaborations with the Greyboy Allstars and scoring Donnie Darko. However, claiming to have written Hand On String for no one but himself, this album certainly feels much more personal. Light but doleful. Breezy but confounding. Bright but shadowy, just like the sunshine in a rainstorm.
 —Jeremy