Al Doyle – Hard Times In America

Al Doyle plays everything on “Hard Times In America”. Lou Hayter adds backing vocals and a guest lead, India Footer sings backing too, but the main voice is Doyle’s own, after decades next to Alexis Taylor and Murphy in Hot Chip and LCD Soundsystem. It opens his first solo album, Hollywood Saviour, out November 20 on DFA Records.

He wrote it from years of trips back and forth to the US, and it plays like a travel diary with the dread turned up: a pilgrim lost somewhere he knows he shouldn’t be, yard signs announcing what the people inside are thinking, a whole country up for sale with its necks wired tight, men who want everything to feel inevitable. In the middle of it he keeps promising to do better, and near the end comes a kid’s run of questions to his dad about buttons, chairs, and the TV. This sounds a lot like a portrait of whoever’s holding the controls. Why did it take him this long to step up to the mic?