120: Talons' - Summer In Russell
A little while back I wrote about discovering the music of Talons' at one of those moments where I really needed it. I was away on my own in a foreign country, all that time for people watching and wandering, smelling new smells, seeing different types of light.
The music of Mike Tolan fit right in to that time, somehow just sad enough, just inquisitive enough, just hopeful enough to act as the perfect companion. I've spent the time since listening through the rest of his back catalogue, a somewhat sprawling collection of home recordings that touch upon themes of love and loss, small details from one small life on a big planet.
He wrote often about the rise of Trump and the rise of Covid, both those passages of time obviously having a profound effect on his worldview. While the former is, disastrously, back at the forefront of 2025, the latter remains a somewhat unfathomable, gloopy fragment of our lives that nobody quite knows how to deal with. "There's a lot about the Covid era that I can't get past. It changed me and largely not for the better," Tolan says in the foreword to his brand new album, in retreat, that he released inconspicuously on Christmas Eve. "Everything is absurd and somehow we need to press on and go to work and pretend like things make sense."
Suitably, in retreat is as burrowed and sorrowful as he's ever sounded. Stripped back to just guitar and voice, you almost feel like you're listening into something you shouldn't; quiet, solitudinal confessions sung to bedroom walls when the rest of the world has gone to sleep.
Tolan carries brilliance in his songs, however, and that continues to cut through, bringing us into this darkly cold winter of his just long enough for the songs to nuzzle their way in. There are 13 of them here, each as disparate and monochromatic as the last. Throw a dart at any of them, and find something similarly moving, but 'summer in russell' quietly stepped out of the malaise on initial seeking:
I love the sound of the insects at night
Why can't that be enough for me?
I look up at the sky through the leaves
And I want to believe
I want to believe
I want to believe in something again
"I wrote most of these songs in 2023. I've tried many times to record them on this old tenor guitar that Al K from Six Parts Seven gave to me. It won't stay in tune and regardless, I just haven't been able to get it done," Tolan writes on the Bandcamp page. "Time is passing and I decided to sit down and play everything live to 1/4" tape. Out of tune. Out of key. But here they are. Things are not OK. The near future is bleak, but we've gotta dig in and grind it out for the kids."
Salt the path, dress for warmth, and dig in below.
~
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