Doug Hoekstra: Waiting

Folk-pop troubadour Doug Hoekstra sings in a deep, whispery half-whine that takes some getting used to. In the past, on albums like Make Me Believe and Around The Margins, the cult singer-songwriter drew attention away from his affected voice by sharing the mic with gospel-tinged backup singers and working his songs into rich, cinematic arrangements. On the new Waiting, Hoekstra keeps the instrumentation sparse and the mood reserved. Waiting was recorded in Hoekstra's home studio while he and his wife prepared for the birth of their first child, and the record has the quiet lilt of a man idly passing the time and trying not to sound too anxious. He and his guitar provide each song's musical center, but bits of organ, percussion, and ambient noise lightly accent the almost hymnlike melodies. Nothing in the mix distracts from the lyrics, which is where Hoekstra more than compensates for any limitations in his vocal style. Waiting's stories and sketches straddle the forms of elliptical fiction and informed, intellectualized commentary, as on the song "Screwball Comedy," which runs down the conventions of the genre (glamour gowns, trains, "Cary Grant in Connecticut") and establishes them as metaphors for personality types and situations. The insights are a little pat, and the tune a bit undernourished, but the concept crackles. Hoekstra has even more success with "Sunday Blues," which describes the way a father and son bond over color funnies and boredom in church ("he scribbles on the program with a chewed-up pencil / hangin' by the hymnal"), and the dexterously pulsing "Crawling Out From Under," which reports on the fleeting sensations that freeze the song's hero, reminding him of disappearing youth. The mellower approach on Waiting takes hold gradually over the course of 12 tracks, culminating in the title song, on which Hoekstra brings back his frequent vocal collaborator Amelia White, for a lullaby that speaks to romantic distance in a tone of happy yearning. (Buy It!)