Review Summary: With his most diverse line-up of compositions, a well-regulated pace per song for incredible flow overall, and a surprising turn-in from the drummer to create lots of little magical moments, Outside Looking In is a cracking card in Hole's deck.
All this time doing my Dave Hole discography drive-through, Outside Looking In was the one I was looking forward to covering the most. Although Ticket To Chicago was the album of his I listened to first, the cuts I sporadically heard from this one were the most songful, the most developed, and I was eager to see if that continued throughout the entire project. Some seven albums in, I am happy to report that Outside Looking In is easily his most artistic work. Maybe not quite his fiery best or his biggest tribute to the blues, it is the one where pulls off what he has been unable to pull off before, something that many of his contemporaries also struggle with: he made an album where every song has an identity and no moment is superfluous.
Right off the bat, the album kicks you in the face with the fervour required from a lead track. Jenny Lee's dual guitar introduction speeds into one of Hole's best rhythm sections, driving a frenetic and tense but still very playful jam. It is one the most exciting songs he has ever put out, and it has a lot of little tricks along the way to remain engaging, with the rip dips in pace and chord changes for extra sonic perspective and resolution. It's pure fun, and a decent taste of things to come.
Outside Looking In's big asset is that of a real sense of development and care, whether it's using motifs and playing with them to correctly develop otherwise standard twelve bar chord structures, but with the requisite Dave Hole sense of fire to elevate and flesh them out (You Move Me So, Living On Borrowed Time, He Knows The Rules), striking a great balance between feel and clinical songwriting (Nobody, How Long), or when he simply manages to really write and develop a track to flesh it out to its fullest. Walk Away is, quite simply, one of Hole's all-time tracks. Verse-chorus-verse has rarely sounded so satisfying because Hole's incredible technique on display fills a driving hard rock beat and some literate lyrical passages. If any song of his could have ever become a 'hit', it was easily this one.
Adding to the idea of striking that balance between feel and the simple art of good songwriting is a surprise turn-in from the session drummer this time around, who almost plays with as much feel as Hole himself and certainly elevates proceedings across the board. Inspired snare blasts on How Long, mini drum solos on You Move Me So, and what can only be described as "crossover quad fills" on many of the tracks' explosive endings give a lot of dimension to the compositions that could have been performed much more simply, and his beautiful pacing on Out Of My Reach establishes it as one of Hole's best slower cuts.
But this is not to discredit Hole himself, whose seeming stroke of inspiration paid off in spades with regards to the compositions. Even more standard bluesy tracks like He Knows The Rules or the title track are given a real sense of room and depth. Little moments like tweaked motifs during the solos, dips and breaks in patterns, escalation in volume and tension and so on help sell these songs to a degree that has never really been felt before, and all this is before we get to some real highlights. Insomniac is so flavourful that it took me dozens of listens to realise it's just the Bo Diddley beat with some harpsichord and organ on top, and distracting me from Bo Diddley takes some real effort. Nobody sounds suitably downtrodden and decrepit, and much like the drummer, Hole's vocal and guitar efforts on Out Of My Reach make for his best ballad.
Even Hole's pure playing style feels better than it usually does, and it's arguably on here where he best meets the middle ground between using singular passages as building blocks and just playing from the heart. His style feels like it leans back towards the Short Fuse Blues days, with digressions and techniques that echo 50s rock as opposed to Chicago blues, but he also just plain feels like he's really getting a sense for what fits where, which is how some passages that have similar techniques and runs can still have definitively different feel to them. This is backed by a vocal performance that is, well, as sharp as you can expect from a man in his mid-50s. A quick revisit to Ticket will convince you that even the veterans can learn and grow, as he's a lot cleaner here.
But talking about the album clinically does it a disservice, as it simply feels way more organic and invigorating over the long run. Perhaps a poor choice of words as the album is fifty one minutes long, shorter than his last couple, but this is a sign that he knew his priorities. The title track is probably the best example of Hole knowing when to cull the fat; were this song done previously, the solo would be twice as long and feel tedious for a song this slow, but as is, it now peaks and bobs at just the right moments and the ending feels satisfying. Many endings feel surprisingly fresh, actually, with some great closing moments that have an active crescendo quality to them.
With as much praise as I have for the songwriting and overall pace, my only complaint is really that he didn't go far enough. For all the great little moments and big digressions that Hole manages to lean in to very successfully, it's clear he still wants to do the blues the way he feels he does best, which is why about half of the album still uses a twelve bar chord structure. Were we to have seen even more diverse song line-ups (Hole has never actually used the four chords of pop before, to my knowledge, and if anyone could make a tired set-up sound fresh again, it's him and his fire), it could have been even more impressive. But the tracks that all share the twelve bar set-up still feel very different, which is the big distinction from prior efforts.
Only two tracks really disappoint. Get A Job is yet another twelve bar tale of a put-upon youth which is rescued by an interesting mix of acoustic and electric elements, but there is no such factor of accessibility for Blues Begins At Home. Even a piano that cuts through cannot save a track whose lyrical content concerns a beleaguered husband who blames all his depressive tendencies on his spouse. As Dave Hole is a happily married man of forty years whose wife has a huge hand in his music's distribution, I fail to see the resonance or relevance of the song. Though he has written many songs like this, this one goes over the line of understated pissiness with no self-awareness.
The production can also be strangely hit-or-miss. The slower, acoustically minded tracks sound better than ever before, but the drums have a weird room to them with an attempt to capture the close quarters crunch found on Ticket, and it doesn't always feel cohesive. The piano will either cut through the mix or be a bit buried, but even these minor flubs are far away from the days of The Plumber. Otherwise, it's hard to find room for improvement on what were Hole's clear aspirations at work, and this is absolutely his best combination of blues staples and songwriting of his own.
Even as a big fan, I can say that Hole's stodgy style can hold him back, and it's difficult to say that he took risks here so much as he was happy to let himself go and spread his wings. But it's his ability to infuse any composition with fire and tenacity that has always kept him afloat even on his weakest releases, so even the smallest deviances have always sounded way better over the course of his career, and Outside Looking In is full of little moments of inspiration and daring. It is the one I expect to come back to the most, the one that's easiest to listen to yet is most rewarding. Most of all, it is the one whose songs all have an identity of their own, where they all feel different, something I felt even Texas Flood could not pull off. Which is why Outside Looking In can easily go toe to toe with the best of them, and for Hole, I am sure there would be no finer praise.
