TRACK | Sam Hirst – Little Thief

5/5 golden merles Sam Hirst’s single “Little Thief” is gracefully askance lo-fi rock, lyrically inventive in its casual utterances, hooks solidly hooking as honed from the various instrumental and melodic turns. It’ll feel a lot like summer even after the summer is gone. There’s a kind of free-form fragility you expect to combust early doors but instead it thrives within the habitat of that gentle rumble and tonal canton. Sometimes the drums stagger, always finding their feet. The specimen of the feeling has been preserved in rare and unflawed form in that terrifying and hopeful manner only art allows. “mother nature gets my goat/she just needs a neck to choke/so when she grabs me by the throat/I won’t be surprised” There’s plenty of finesse that’s gone into it; the bass step-down playing off the established guitar lead, the snare snapping in a manner that awakens but only gently obliterates your brain, the backing vocal’s sustained waver girding the latter stages of a verse, a few…