Fusing post-punk touchstones with his heartland-rock heroes, a reinvigorated Timothy Showalter comes back to the light.

Timothy Showalter’s decade-plus career as Strand of Oaks teeters on an empirical belief that maybe there are no lines between art and life at all. His towering, synth-infused rock anthems and solemn guitar-and-voice meditations relay his experience in plain language: his adolescence in the small Indiana town of Goshen, his musical heroes, his fears and self-loathing, the messy emotional goulash of love and marriage. His rocker’s distillation of Henry James’ position—that “A novel is in its broadest definition a personal, a direct impression of life”—fuses a bold shoegaze and heartland-rock aesthetic with the lyrical posture of modern confessionalists like Mount Eerie and Margo Price. The contrast reflects the dimensions of Showalter, alternately a contemplative and reclusive figure steeped in the craft and an unrepentant showman who can command a room with comedic bits and tales of late-night ragers.

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Pitchfork
Strand of Oaks - Eraserland Review (7.4)