Cinema In The Mind: Micah P. Hinson Interview

Even for those strolling through the gardens outside Islington’s Union Chapel who have never heard the music of Micah P Hinson, it’s not hard to guess he is a man with a taste for retro Americana. With his big Buddy Holly spectacles, gleaming white blazer and bold rock-and-roll haircut, this modern-day folk-country troubadour looks very much the part, as he sits on a picnic bench and contemplates his love for an era that continually inspires more than just his songs. The cover of his new album, ‘Micah P. Hinson and the Pioneer Saboteurs’ – featuring mock-creases, old-fashioned Western lettering and photographs taken by Hinson himself of a topless model brandishing a revolver – indicates his love for his country’s cultural past.

“I am fascinated with the 1950s and ‘60s,” nods the 29-year-old. “I’m obsessed with the comic books, the writing, the art, the clothing – just everything, man. When it comes to old-timey music, there’s just something about all that that makes me feel at home. So I wanted the cover of my new record to look like something really old. We spent a lot of time getting the right pictures, the right fonts, making sure the colours weren’t spot on and that there were mistakes – I wanted it to be like an old cult magazine.”

In contrast, the current state of his home country provokes only frustration. Hinson, who hails from Texas via Tennessee and West Virginia, laments “the death of the American dream” that drives his work as much as personal emotions.

“We take all this bullshit from fat fucking cats, and we just sit on our asses and eat McDonalds and don’t do dick about it,” he says. “The thing that I love about America is that if you work hard then things will work out for you generally, but if you’re a lazy, cock-sucking motherfucker then no good will come.

“I was a lazy bastard for a long time. I didn’t have money to feed myself; it was a very interesting time. All you have to do is have a work ethic. I wouldn’t say I’m a pro-capitalist but I’m pro people finding their dream. And because of big business and big government people don’t feel they can accomplish anything, and that makes for a lazy society.”

But Hinson is not another revivalist merely looking backwards for inspiration, hopelessly pining after the nostalgia for a supposed golden age he is too young to have experienced. It is true that, purely in terms of their traditional genre and the range of instruments used, his new songs could have been written 50 years ago. Yet in the way the tracks have been produced, with heavy swells of strings straining plaintively into the mix and pulling the album in unexpected directions, Hinson’s influences are much more contemporary.

“I wanted to make something that was an equivalent to The Flaming Lips’ Yoshimi And The Pink Robots,” he says, “or The Soft Bulletin, or Loveless by My Bloody Valentine. Not something that sounded like those records, but something where you didn’t quite understand what was going on at times. I wanted people to be pulled into this odd world where the drums and the guitars don’t sound how you expect them to, and then at the end you have all the fucking madness as it leads out with strings.”

“Strings are always a very important part of what I do,” he continues. “I think it’s because for so long they were out of my grasp before I was making music professionally. I loved strings and classical music but I knew I could never do that myself. Now I can pay some people to do it.”

The spaces in which the strings really come to the fore in Pioneer Saboteurs – moments where the musician steps back and gives his compositions time to breathe with an instrumental or two – bring comparisons with the last album by Hinson’s fellow fan of that bygone time, Richard Hawley. Hinson is indeed a big fan of Hawley, but unfortunately he isn’t able to listen to the British crooner’s music too often.

“I went on tour with him and some things transpired on the first night that upset my wife grandly,” he reveals. “They had nothing to do with Mr Hawley but she doesn’t like the association – if you’re hit by a Coke bus, you’ll always be afraid of Coke. But every once in a while I’m by myself and I’ll break out Cole’s Corner and I’ll listen to it by myself on the vinyl.”

While he quietly wishes he could listen to Hawley’s records more often, Hinson is very much in love with his wife – whom he proposed to during his previous gig at the Union Chapel, in fact. He’s happy with the way life has developed more generally following a wild youth too (a subject so well trodden that it feels old hat to run through it with him once again – let’s just say there were some drugs involved). But, as evidenced by the melancholy nature of his music, he still has his problems.

“I have a degenerative back disease, and the doctors told me last week that they can do nothing to fix me except just fuck me up on drugs all the time. The troubles are still there, they’re just different.”

When he later takes to the Union Chapel stage, however, it looks at first as if some of his old issues might still be with him.

The welcoming applause has barely died down when a sense of anxiety spreads through the front rows. His eyes look distinctly glazed, as if he can barely focus on the guitar in front of him. The audience listens to his articulate but slightly rambled greeting with worry as much as affection. It seems he could stumble over the lead for his instrument – decorated, Bob Dylan-style, with the words This Machine Kills Fascists – at any second.

Yet when he begins playing, reassurance is swift and complete. He might look as if he’s had one too many pre-show spliffs and tumblers of bourbon, but his guitar-playing is note-perfect. And the timbre and delivery of that wonderfully old-before-its-time voice of his? Utterly compelling. Playing alone, the stripped-back live set prove the power of songwriting, while also enhancing appreciation of the artistic ambition that has gone into the recording of his album. His yarns of mental institutions and snuff movies, as much a part of his act as his music, are thoroughly entertaining and endearing too.

Bleary-eyed but brilliant, Hinson knows how to hold both interviewers and entire venues captivated throughout.

Micah P. Hinson and the Pioneer Saboteurs is out now