Incredibly powerful songwriting that is lyrical, atmospheric, and makes sadness sound beautifully hopeful.

11 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Modern Rock, ROCK: Slowcore



Details:
"The Liquor Witch is the kind of ambitious and nakedly sincere rock album that people have apparently forgotten how to make. Somewhere between the vapid state of mainstream music and the uber-hip nonsense of indie rock lies this broken but beautiful masterpiece." Splendid Music Press.

For fans of: The National, Wilco, Ryan Adams, Nick Cave, Sun Kil Moon.

The Liquor Witch is the debut solo release from Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter Sean Madigan Hoen, frontman of the Detroit-based Leaving Rouge (Greyday) and The Holy Fire (Militia Group). Hoen has slummed in the trenches of music subculture for over a decade, recording, touring and developing a bad habit of walking away from his bands as they seem on the brink of becoming known. Hoen formed the art-damaged Thoughts of Ionesco at age 17, whom Spin Magazine called âan art-core mindfuckâ in 1998. Hoen dissolved TOI, while struggling with personal crisis and family deaths, as the band was negotiating a recording contract with Caroline Distribution.

Years later Hoen emerged with the plaintiff Leaving Rouge, an inconsistent yet endearing project that spanned over 20 members in just three years and blended the emotional precision of early Red House Painters with more sprawling textures that called to mind mid-period The Cure. The group opened for acts as wide- ranging as Ted Leo and Avril Lavinge (as a joke) and was even featured in Playgirl magazine. Again Hoen unceremoniously disbanded the project to focus on The Holy Fire, a more vivid ârockâ approach that was signed with Sony subsidiary Militia Group and recorded a debut album with members of The Flaming Lips. Just months later, Hoen unceremoniously disappeared from his native Detroit, surfacing in Coney Island, Brooklyn with a batch of new demos.

Thus brings us The Liquor Witch. With his schizophrenic business sense, itâs not likely that any major record companies await Hoen this time; yet the music contained here, under his own name for the first time, is awkwardly beautiful, imperfect, and undeniably moving. Recorded sporadically and quickly during 2006, The Liquor Witch opens with âWe Are Pedestrians,â a soundscape based on one revolving set of piano chords that stretches on for five and a half minutes. By the songâs end, Hoen is heard laughing maniacally beneath a wash of spastic trumpets and distortion, yet the quaint melody of the piece remains the focus.

The album is filled with dissimilar songs that somehow settle into one another. âHeat of the Bightâ is straight out of a Lyle Lovett/Bruce Springsteen songbook while âMakes You Lovelyâ (featuring the Alkaline Trioâs Derek Grant) merges alt country pedal steel with an almost trip-hop groove. Throughout the album there is the juxtaposition of good and evil (âTurn the crosses upside down/Turn me onâ) and allusions to Hoenâs addictive heredity (âWhy do you think I do it so much/I give five good days for one good crutchâ) and while these themes have been hashed over many times, there is an uncanny sincerity to The Liquor Witch that warrants most of its affectation.

The final piece of music recorded for the album was the title track, penned and four-tracked in a dingy Coney Island haunt. There is a sense of clearing and penance as Hoen sings âFix me, sober and homely/Warm and safe, herbal and boney.â In a just world these songs might blare from the windows of lonely apartments across the world, but as it is those of us who have stumbled upon The Liquor Witch can listen alone, feeling like weâre in on something that the rest of them are missing out on. (Greyday, 2007)

Selling Points:

Received songwriting awards/grants from ASCAP
Two Leaving Rouge records still in print
Leaving Rougeâs âRaise Your Loveâ was used on MTVâs Made
Hoenâs has worked with members of the Flaming Lips
National tour in fall/winter 2007/2008