Artist: Graham Hunt

Location: Madison, WI

Buzz: Before there was even a ’90s alternative revival declared a few years ago, Graham Hunt had already begun trying on all of its loose-fitting fashions and accessories out in the Midwest underground rock scene well before Run for Cover Records would turn him into your everyday indie listener’s latest favorite name. Personally, I hadn’t even heard of the guy before the Boston label signed him, but then again, Alex G had been dropping DIY classics all across Bandcamp before the very same label would bring DSU to the independent scene’s wider audience. That said, if you’re first brush with the Wisconsin songwriter is not from his time leading Midnight Reruns or being a part of the Disq and Mike Krol’s live bands, but rather his breakthrough sixth full-length effort, Timeless World Wonder, you’ll catch up in no time with all the ways his esoteric twist on the riff has made him one of alternative guitar-pop’s freshest visionaries on a vintage cool.

Pegged as the conclusion to a trilogy of albums that began in 2022 with If You Knew Would You Believe It and continued with 2023’s Try Not to Laugh (you’ll want to revisit those in a prequal sense, for sure…,) the indie rock lifer’s latest cuts and pastes together all of the sonic pieces he’s been tinkering with which cultivate a small space bombastic energy made from baggy, tripped out psychedelia, power-pop, garage punk, and hip-hop parts in a way where the contradictions begin to make sense. The characters in his songs might look and act a lot like him, people from his hometown, or might just be figments of his own creative fiction (or one could wish were just fiction — see: “East Side Screamer”,) but the one thing every one of them has in common is that they’re just trying to find a way to get by in a noisy world. While Hunt invites that collage of noise into his headspace, he finds a way to funnel it through his pedal and turns it an uncanny melody.

Sound: A guitar-pop brain-melt of sunshine cracking through the pavement of suburban living.

Recommended: “I Just Need Enough” “East Side Screamer”, and “Power Object” from his recently-released album, Timeless World Forever, and 2022’s If You Knew Would You Believe It and 2023’s Try Not to Laugh

Summer Tour Dates:

Graham Hunt’s Timeless World Forever is available now on Run for Cover Records.