Magnetic North

“Magnetic North” is Hales’ first album of all new material since he relocated from England to sunny Los Angeles last fall. A song snippet, “California,” foreshadowed his new home. “When that song was written, it still just represented somewhere else, something else better. It was New Year’s Eve 2008 when my wife Kim [Oliver] and I decided it was time for a change.”

“Magnetic North” is a glorious celebration of smart pop music. Led by Hales’ exquisite keyboard-based melodies, the album’s 12 songs revel in impossibly upbeat joy, such as the Beck-like opening track, “New Friend” and the unabashedly, uncynical “Fingertip,” and just as surely drown in the bleak sorrow of “Sundowning” or layered, grand majesty of “Time Moves Slow.” The chugging, percussive “Hummingbird” exalts in the force majeure of Hales’ 2-year old daughter. In their own way, each song sweeps the listener up in its arms and takes him or her on a musical journey.

The album includes many guests including Sara Bareilles on the haunting “Remember Us” and “New Friend,” as well as A Fine Frenzy’s Alison Sudol on “Time Moves Slow,” and Kelly Sweet on “Fingertip” and “Sundowning.”

“The thing that I noticed is that in so many of these songs, there are really two protagonists and it’s a couple. It doesn’t have to be a man and a woman, but it made an awful lot of sense for there to be two vocalists,” Hales says. “I didn’t realize how well it was going to work.”

Hales recorded “Magnetic North” over a five-day period at his home studio, The Box (named so because it’s as big as a cardboard box, he jokes) and at The Bank, a friend’s studio in Burbank. The core musicians were Hales, his brother and drummer/percussionist David Price.