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”(I’m In The) Sunshine State,” the first track from Popsychle, the second release of 2020 from The Alex Butter Field, begins a crackling guitar and, well, sun-drenched vocals that intone the title in rich harmonies. “I’m in the sunshine state,” the voices sing, “and I feel great.”
Whether they mean Florida specifically is beside the point. As winter sets in on a strange year, the song is a blast of warm weather, and much-needed optimism.
The Alex Butter Field is the psychedelic pop experiment from Hank Hoffman — New Haven-based musician, Happy Ending band member, and Best Video executive director — years in the making and finally released in two installments in 2020, the first of which was Psychedelipop in August (read the Independent’s previous article about that). To realize his vision, Hoffman, who sings and plays guitars and keyboards, enlisted help from some of the New Haven music scene’s finest: Tom Smith on drums and percussion, Andy Karlok on bass, Dean Falcone on electric and acoustic guitars, keyboards, and mellotron, and Scott Amore on keyboards and percussion.
But you don’t have to know the history to know that Hoffman is a devotee of the psychedelic era, as both a musician and listener. It’s there in the music itself — the particular sway of the rhythm, a certain lushness to the atmosphere, that all adds up to an invitation to get lost for a while.
So the second track on the album, “Fly,” is laced with the sounds of sitar among the sunny guitars. “He wishes he could fly,” Hoffman sings, but the song is already doing it, effortlessly. The strutting rocker “Tear My Heart Out” — which also features horns and winds from Yannis Panos and Erik Elligers — starts high, woozy keys that expand the song’s sound, in a way that would make dancers throw their hands in their air while keeping time with their feet, before it lurches into and out of a waltz.
But the album also lets the seasons change. “Snowflakes” describes a winter’s day that’s still no downer; “I can’t help but pray for another snowy day,” Hoffman sings. “Jesus Never Came Back” features a search for salvation that feels as joyful as it is urgent, even if it also sardonically chronicles some more earthly loss of affection (“I don’t know if Jesus loves me / but I know you don’t,” Hoffman sings, echoing one of Lyle Lovett’s more memorable lyric turns).
If Popsychle takes us on a trup, the album’s closer, “Winter Light,” brings us back to where we are now, even as its sound finds Hoffman’s songwriting at its most expansive. Featuring strings from Netta Hadari, Colin Benn, and Aimee Kanzler that dance around the song’s harmonic structure, Hoffman speaks of rapture while the guitars let us know what that rapture sounds like. It all ends on a note of warmth and comfort. Whether that tranquility is the result of finding a place in the beyond or returning home, at the end of this most strange and difficult year, it’s all the more welcome.