Neilson Hubbard

Aesop lived a long way from the Mississippi Delta, but the folks in towns like Hattiesburg, Vicksburg and Biloxi know that “slow and steady wins the race.” Whether it’s the heat or the time it takes to pronounce all those extra syllables, life moves just a little slower in southern Mississippi. So it should come at no surprise that Sing Into Me, the latest release from Jackson native Neilson Hubbard, has more to do with the tortoise than the hare.

“It must be something in the water,” he offers as explanation. “This drummer I [played with called my music] the Mississippi Heroin Groove, having nothing to do with drugs and alcohol.” The 30-year-old Hubbard comes across as someone who indeed has nothing to do with drugs and alcohol. A clean-cut and polite Ole Miss grad who’s been married for seven years, he sings primarily about faith and sweetness and light. But the drummer’s description of his music fits. It’s sparse, dreamy pop—like Matthew Sweet on a sleepy high and without a rhythm section. He wakes up briefly on “Everything’s Starting,” but slips back into a lovely cello-drenched ballad, “Say You Love Me.” It’s music for a candlelit dinner or an evening under the stars.

Hubbard began his recording career with This Living Hand, a trio whose parts turned out to be much more successful than their whole. Drummer and backing vocalist Garrison Starr recently opened on a tour with Steve Earle in support of her latest, beautifully crafted alt.country solo album, Songs from Take-off to Landing. And bassist/guitarist Clay Jones works with producer Dennis Herring at Sweet Tea studio in Oxford, Miss., where he’s played on records for Counting Crows and blues legend Buddy Guy. He also produced three of the tracks on Sing Into Me.

Hubbard’s solo debut came in 1997 on Adam Duritz’ E Pluribus Unum label. With its big, hooky chord progressions, Slide Projector drew comparisons to power-pop bands like Big Star. After a bleak but critically acclaimed slo-core follow-up in 2001, Why Men Fail, those pop tendencies are back in force all over Sing Into Me, even if the tempo hasn’t picked up.

“It’s a really stripped-down record for me,” Hubbard says in a bit of understatement, “which was exciting for me. I wanted to do something without a lot of drums.”

It’s also the most spiritually themed of his three records. The album ends with a completely earnest version of Lou Reed’s “Jesus” and a song called “Praise to You,” whose lyrics read more like a hymn than a pop song.

“It’s a quiet record, but ‘Jesus’ seemed to fit in there. I’m just trying to take the irony out of it at the same time.”

But Hubbard eschews dogma as well as irony as he sings, “Angels sing perfect melody / Heavens fall down at your feet / Praise to you for this night / Praise to you for my life.” There’s no forced earnestness, no sappy greeting card mentalities—just quiet, honest expressions of love told over melodies that would grab you at any speed.