Album Of The Week: Graham Hunt Timeless World Forever

In 1839, the Spanish-born carriage driver Diogo Alves was convicted of killing a total of five people in Portugal, and he was executed for those homicides less than two years later. After his death, he’d be given the nickname "the Aqueduct Murderer,” a reference to a series of dozens of deaths that occurred at Lisbon’s Águas Livres Aqueduct, all around the same time. But Alves was never actually suspected of those deaths at the aqueduct during his lifetime. Recent historical investigations show that Alves' unrelated murders were probably used as a scapegoat for the moral panic that ensued after the string of deaths, which are now widely believed to have been suicides and which continued for a few years after Alves' execution. A head preserved in formaldehyde on display at the University of Lisbon was, for decades, believed to have belonged to Alves. Today, researchers think the skull -- much like his reputation oft-referenced in Portuguese media -- shouldn’t be attributed to him after all.

I think of the Aqueduct Murderer legend when I listen to Graham Hunt’s Timeless World Forever, out this Friday -- and not just because he references Iberia, finding “five figures,” and a head in a jar on the power-pop jammer of a single “Frog In The Shower.” The Wisconsin singer-songwriter says his new album is the final entry in a trilogy of LPs. Where 2022’s If You Knew Would You Believe It dealt with tangible reality (“We’ll die in the same hospital we were born in”) and 2023’s Try Not To Laugh was fully emotional (“To trust your instincts really is an art/ ‘Cause before I didn't and it really broke my heart”), Timeless World Forever is concerned with where logic and perception intersect. Together, Hunt adds, the trilogy depicts his “sort of imaginary magic realist version” of his Madison hometown, finding humor in the dark stories that bury something even darker. The Aqueduct Murderer legend might seem silly now, but can you blame the Portuguese people for wanting to believe their own people died as the result of one man’s ill intention instead of some greater omnipresent sadness plaguing the community?

“Since I’ve been the age to comprehend consequence/ It’s felt like I’m given a test/ It’s one that I’m just barely passing/ Just enough to not get expelled,” Hunt broods on the woozy, waltzing anthem “Spiritual Problems,” as if he’s considering how his own intentions might get misconstrued after he’s whisked away in a hearse: “Give me the dignity when you write my biography/ Wait ‘til I’m already dead.” At the same time, he’s ready to grant others the type of grace he knows he’s not guaranteed himself. “I hold shelter in my heart/ For those down the wrong path and/ Those they tread upon/ And who look at them and laugh,” he sings on the ramshackle opener “I Just Need Enough,” landing on one particularly diplomatic payoff as he belts, “I don’t need no mausoleum, baby, I just need enough!”

Graham Hunt is, first and foremost, an indie rocker. Over the past decade-plus, he’s performed and recorded with fellow Madison acts like Disq and Midnight Reruns, and that background translates well to his solo work. On Timeless World Forever, however, Hunt adapted a different technique. “I tried to approach the recording process like I was making a modern pop record,” he said. “I cut and paste things together to build a song as if I’m using MIDI instruments, but instead I use clips that I recorded of myself or my friends playing real instruments.” The result doesn’t sound much like a pop diva but instead like the neo-psychedelia of groups like Primal Scream and the Go! Team, filtered through a melodic formula indebted to heartland rock heroes like the Replacements and Big Star.

Hunt then jumbles these pieces together until it becomes something ever-so-slightly off-kilter, where the caffeinated melody creates a touch of nervous tension with the discordant background chords: “The refs are getting paid off/ Coming from both sides,” he sings, challenging the idea that true fairness is possible. “Cave Art” dances along with a wobbling, bouncy bassline, scattered with dashes of distorted noise, while the rapped verses of the explosive standout single “East Side Screamer” give way to full-on screams in the chorus -- not the kind you hear in metal, but the kind you’d emit yourself barreling down a rollercoaster’s tallest drop. Whether they’re “leaning on the grace of a nameless investor” or “bracing for a pummeling” from the neighborhood freaks, Hunt’s narrators, too, seem to derive amusement from things meant to strike fear.

Recorded in the same home studio as Hunt’s previous two albums, Timeless World Forever is a record that tries to make sense of the universe around it, landing on the conclusion that most things don’t make sense at all. But it’s not bleak, searching for reprieve in the form of acceptance, as Hunt explains, instead of black-and-white answers. “There’s one place I can go that’s not a bar so grab the keys,” Hunt sings in the final lines of garage rocker “Movie Night,” searching for a distraction from an apparent heartbreak. “I feel the smiley face graffiti shift its gaze off me.” And with that, Hunt closes his trilogy with a cliffhanger ending. Not quite happy but not explicitly upsetting, the album's half-hour runtime leaving ample opportunity to listen again and again and derive new meaning from the quirks. Sometimes, the cliffhanger ending is comfortingly vague. I'd argue it's timeless.

Timeless World Forever is out 6/13 via Run For Cover.

Other albums of note out this week:
• Van Morrison's Remembering Now
• King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard's Phantom Island
• Dummy's Bubbelibrium DLC
• Iann Dior's Cycles
• Big Freedia's Pressing Onwards
• Sorry Girls' Dreamwalker
• Joe Armon-Jones' All The Quiet (Part I)
• Mister Romantic (John C. Reilly)’s What’s Not To Love?
• Murder By Death's Egg & Dart
• Ruby Friedman Orchestra's Chimes After Midnight
• The Bug Club's Very Human Features
• Cosey Fanni Tutti's 2t2
• Career Woman's Lighthouse
• Vinyl Williams' Polyhaven / Portasymphony
• Sons Of The East's SONS
• Annahstasia's Tether
• Patrick Wolf's Crying The Neck
• Talulah Paisley's Fool
• Lyra Pramuk's Hymnal
• WITCH's SOGOLO
• Theo Croker's Dream Manifest
• Hallelujah The Hills' DECK
• Buick Audra's Adult Child
• Sea Lemon's Diving For A Prize
• Steve Queralt's Swallow
• Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer's Different Rooms
• Holden & Zimpel's The Universe Will Take Care Of You
• Adam Tilzer's Cult Leader
• Common Holly's Anything Glass
• FaltyDL's Neurotica
• Felly's Ambroxyde
• DF TRAM's Bittersweet Afternoon
• Brandon Lake's King Of Hearts
• Vegas Water Taxi's things are gonna be alright (expanded edition)
• Calum Hood's ORDER chaos ORDER
• Plight's Plight
• Nyah Grace's Divinely Devoted
• Mary Halvorson's About Ghosts
• Brett Young's 2.0
• Terri Lyne Carrington & Christie Dashiell's We Insist 2025!
• Xol Meissner's Excess Of Loss
• Star Matriarch's Red Ship
• LSDXOXO's DGTL ANML Mixtape
• Leafblower's Burn Cruise
• Subsonic Eye’s Singapore Dreaming
• Dierks Bentley's Broken Branches
• Gabriel Brady's Day-Blind
• Felly's Ambroxyde (LP)
• The Cure's Mixes Of A Lost World
• Stefan Wesołowski's Song Of The Night Mists
• Natalie Bergman's My Home Is Not In This World
• Juri Seo's Obsolete Music
• Buscabulla's Se Amaba Así
• Grateful Dead's Gratest Hits
• Béton Armé's Renaissance
• Darrell Scott's Wayne’s Pain
• Ginger Winn's Freeze Frame
• Leikeli47's Lei Keli ft. 47 / For Promotional Use Only
• Puffer's Street Hassle
• Woodkid's WOODKID FOR DEATH STRANDING 2: ON THE BEACH
• Flash Hits' Witch Kids Seek Magic World
• Neil Young And The Chrome Hearts' Talkin To The Trees
• Self Improvement's Syndrome
• Pixel Grip's Percepticide: The Death Of Reality
• King Isis' SIRENITY
• WPTR's Redness & Swelling At The Injection Site
• Phabies'
• Joseph Allred's Old Time Fantasias
• ITZY's Girls Will Be Girls
• Kate NV's Room For The Moon Live
• Slick Rick's Victory
• Meir Levine's Long & Lonely Highway
• Jazmine Mary's I Want To Rock And Roll
• Gary Wilson's Come On, Mary
• Vinnie Stigma's The Outlaw
• Rhys Langston's Pale Black Negative
• The Dare's What’s Wrong With New York?: Afters
• Dyer Davis' Kiss The Ring
• Various Artists' Music From And Inspired By Smurfs
• Dan Darrah & The Rain's There's A Place
• Genesis' The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (50th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition)
• Metallica's Load Remastered Limited Edition Deluxe Box Set
• The Funeral Portrait's Greetings From Suffocate City (Deluxe)
• BunnaB's Bunna Summa (Ice Cream Summer Deluxe Mixtape
• Suki Waterhouse's Memoir Of A Sparklemuffin (Deluxe)
• New Kids On The Block's Step By Step (35th Anniversary Deluxe)
• Queens Of The Stone Age's Alive In Paris And Before Live Album
• Daniel Pemberton's Materialists Soundtrack
• Jed Kurzel's Echo Valley Soundtrack
• Jahnah Camille's My sunny oath! EP
• My Hair Is A Rat's Nest's A Life With No Caveats EP
• Dominique & The Diamonds' Dominique & The Diamonds EP
• Eater's Wasting Time - The Lost 1978 Sessions EP
• PYREX's Slugman EP
• Pretoria's If We're Pretending EP
• Kimmortal's Sunniest Of Days EP
• Mikayla Pasterfield's Heritage Listed EP
• TOKiMONSTA's Eternal Reverie Remixes Pt. 2 EP