“Craft Pop” is the phrase Dan Hylton uses to describe his particular brand of acoustic-driven, gentle but driving sound. If the phrase evokes something between a workbench and a great deal of focused labor and, well, a fine beer, that’s sort of the point. Hylton has been honing his craft for four decades, and his upcoming release, The Secret of HIM, reflects his hard work. Yet the end result sounds free of sweat, and engagingly fluid.
Listeners of alternative acoustic pop of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s may recognize Hylton’s influences. He’s identified Morrisey’s output during those heady college-radio days. Boy, a standout track from the upcoming release, starts with an inviting simple guitar strum, but builds to an emotional crescendo. Lyrically, the song evokes a transition in the life of a young man, where life isn’t fully mapped but “crappiness abounded.” The lyrics to Boy evoke a specific location, the Camden Community, where Dan moved to after growing up in northern Iowa and graduating from Iowa State University.
“It was important to me to make some of those local references, and I think people have appreciated trying to pick out a reference here and there that they might recognize or relate to,” Dan says in describing the inspiration for Boy. Equally evocative, but more playful, is the catchy, uptempo lead-off track, My Friends the Brits. Dan confesses this track has been on the bench for some time. “I hit upon the guitar ‘hook’ in the chorus and was loving it so much, it was almost more like I didn’t dare touch the song for fear of not doing it justice.” Lyrically, once Dan settled down and mustered the courage to to hammer out the words, it happened in a single night. “I approached it from a pretty honest self-assessment regarding my admiration for the country of my ancestry.” The result is a punchy lead to the six-song collection that does not suggest the years of artistic tweaking and fiddling. The ‘craft’ of it.
We discussed my personal favorites of the batch, The Good Night Loves You So and Green-Colored Eyes. The Good Night is unassuming but haunting, recalling those early-‘90s college radio stations. The lyrics come from an unlikely literary inspiration: Melaine, from Gone With the Wind. As for Green-Colored Eyes, this is another track that’s been in the shop for some time.
“I had a version of the song done in 2003. That sat around for a number of years, with me not totally satisfied. When I got back in the studio, I built it again from the ground up. I definitely had this strong idea I wanted to express about how I feel about my relationship with Sharon, my wife, during the best of times, and the words just fell out.”
Hylton has been performing in several bands since his college days. The group 44 released an album in 1999, then he and Pat Gibbons recorded and performed as Dan and Pat. Listening to that work (Camden Garden was released in 2003), the current sound on Dan’s album has reached a new plateau. The CD release party for The Secret of Him is at The Warren: An Artist Habitat (4400 Osseo Rd.) on August 4 at 7 p.m.; admission is $5 or purchase of the $8 EP.