Cory Hanson – I Love People (Drag City) (13th Floor Album Review)
On I Love People, his fifth solo album, Cory Hanson offers a warm, sun-drenched, and slightly subversive take on the 1970s American songbook.
Where 2021’s Pale Horse Rider drifted through cosmic Americana, and 2023’s Western Cum exploded with glam swagger and surreal humour, I Love People sits in between, with a melodic richness, elegant playing, and studio polish of Laurel Canyon at its peak. It also adds a gentle twist to make it something stranger, funnier, and more emotionally fraught.
The album is also a vivid contrast to his output with Wand, the band he co-founded in 2013. Where Wand‘s music has evolved from garage-psych and heavy fuzz into expansive, collaborative, and jam-based explorations, especially on albums like Plum and Vertigo Hanson’s solo work is more deliberately composed, lyrically centred, and stylistically varied.
The opener, Bird on a Swing, sets the tone as guitars chime over an unhurried, contemplative rhythm. The band joins in slowly, with layered instrumentation and restrained echo. “I don’t need you anymore,” sings Hanson, his voice dry and tender. The song rides through airy strums and delicate drops, anchored by melodic guitar phrases and quiet moments that add emotional weight.
Joker follows with a faster tempo and a playful lift. Guitars entwine, rise and fall. The soul and shine of the track is capped by a brass-filled outro that suggests joy without ever tipping into kitsch. Like many songs here, it sparkles, without dazzling blindly.
The title track, I Love People, is exuberant and cheeky, with a 60s-style rhythmic shuffle, complete with start-stop turns and “pa-pa-pa” vocals. It unfolds as a rolling celebration, built on drum rhythms that shift emphasis like a loving wink.
From there, I Don’t Believe You dials things back. Its gentle ascent with slow cymbals, sparing keys, and vocal restraint, shows Hanson at his most minimal. The track resists climax, instead offering space for reflection and contemplation.
Santa Claus is Coming Back to Town may raise eyebrows with its title, but the song itself is solemn and near-liturgical. Opening with synths and keys that swell like a church organ, the line “It’s Friday night again” lands with a sense of quiet dread or ritual. The vocals are placed carefully, like candles being lit in a darkened room.
On Lou Reed, Hanson channels his darker instincts with precise control. Over moody piano and snare taps, he evokes Berlin era Reed, both lyrically and atmospherically. The saxophone, referenced in the lyrics, then arrives briefly and ghostlike.
Final Frontier is the album’s emotional core. Picked guitar notes drift up and down the fretboard with silences you can feel. The lyric “It’s good to believe that you don’t exist” haunts a track caught between resignation and yearning. Synths and guitar pull in opposing directions, leaving the listener suspended in the tension.
From there, the album’s back third explores tonal shifts. Texas Weather is celebratory, driven by upbeat strums, drums, and harmonica, while Bad Miracles returns to existential unease. It begins with a dry confession that recalls Nick Cave, “I’m not a praying man but I will be at the end” and builds steadily until a strident electric guitar fractures the calm, “Lightning strikes you from a clear blue sky.”
Old Policeman draws things back down to a hush, with piano and synth gliding beneath gently spaced vocals. Repetition creates a kind of hypnosis. Finally, On the Rocks closes the album with a rolling, upbeat rhythm, picked guitar lines, a steady pulse, and a soft sense of resolve.
There are no wasted gestures here. Every sound and lyric is carefully placed. With I Love People, Cory Hanson has delivered his most cohesive and accessible album yet, while retaining the intrigue and poetic ambiguity that make his work so beguiling. If you like your sunshine with a shadow, or your classic song craft with a twinkle in its eye, I Love People is an experience that will reward you. Again and again.
John Bradbury
I Love People is out now on Drag City Records.
