The Liquor Witch by Sean Madigan Hoen

Hoen dissolved TOI, while struggling with personal crisis and family deaths, as the band was negotiating a recording contract with Caroline Distribution.

Years later Hoen emerged with the plaintiff Leaving Rouge, an inconsistent yet endearing project that spanned over 20 members in just three years and blended the emotional precision of early Red House Painters with more sprawling textures that called to mind mid-period The Cure. The group opened for acts as wide- ranging as Ted Leo and Avril Lavinge (as a joke) and was even featured in Playgirl magazine. Again Hoen unceremoniously disbanded the project to focus on The Holy Fire, a more vivid “rock” approach that was signed with Sony subsidiary Militia Group and recorded a debut album with members of The Flaming Lips. Just months later, Hoen unceremoniously disappeared from his native Detroit, surfacing in Coney Island, Brooklyn with a batch of new demos.

Thus brings us The Liquor Witch. With his schizophrenic business sense, it’s not likely that any major record companies await Hoen this time; yet the music contained here, under his own name for the first time, is awkwardly beautiful, imperfect, and undeniably moving. Recorded sporadically and quickly during 2006, The Liquor Witch opens with “We Are Pedestrians,” a soundscape based on one revolving set of piano chords that stretches on for five and a half minutes. By the song’s end, Hoen is heard laughing maniacally beneath a wash of spastic trumpets and distortion, yet the quaint melody of the piece remains the focus.

The album is filled with dissimilar songs that somehow settle into one another. “Heat of the Bight” is straight out of a Lyle Lovett/Bruce Springsteen songbook while “Makes You Lovely” (featuring the Alkaline Trio’s Derek Grant) merges alt country pedal steel with an almost trip-hop groove. Throughout the album there is the juxtaposition of good and evil (“Turn the crosses upside down/Turn me on”) and allusions to Hoen’s addictive heredity (“Why do you think I do it so much/I give five good days for one good crutch”) and while these themes have been hashed over many times, there is an uncanny sincerity to The Liquor Witch that warrants most of its affectation.

The final piece of music recorded for the album was the title track, penned and four-tracked in a dingy Coney Island haunt. There is a sense of clearing and penance as Hoen sings “Fix me, sober and homely/Warm and safe, herbal and boney.” In a just world these songs might blare from the windows of lonely apartments across the world, but as it is those of us who have stumbled upon The Liquor Witch can listen alone, feeling like we’re in on something that the rest of them are missing out on. (Greyday, 2007)

Selling Points:

Received songwriting awards/grants from ASCAP

Two Leaving Rouge records still in print

Leaving Rouge’s “Raise Your Love” was used on MTV’s Made

Hoen’s has worked with members of the Flaming Lips

National tour in fall/winter 2007/2008

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