Kevin Bronson on January 22nd, 2022

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Spencer Hoffman is one-fourth of the L.A.-via-Sacramento outfit Honyock, makers of sweet, ’70s-styled jams who have been cooling their heels since releasing the EP “#13” in 2020 and getting all psychedelic on last year’s single “Boutonnière.”

Hoffman is stepping out to release a five-song solo EP, “A Flower From Behind,” on Feb. 25 via Park the Van Records. It showcases his more trad-folk side — witness the aching warble in the vocal line and the subtle backing vocals of Annie Fifer on his latest single, “Lie.”

“It brings me back to the trailer park and motel where I spent a lot of time growing up,” Hoffman says. “My grandpa would drive me around in his red Toyota pickup on his way to repair something at the pool hall or the country store, and sing Roger Miller and Willie Nelson tunes while drumming his fingers on his leather steering wheel cover. It’s the first song I wrote that embraced my country roots like that, and came out of a set of circumstances that were making me weary of certain people I had left behind in my hometown.”

That latter quality is revealed in lyrics, including “When you get older you’ll know / Or maybe you won’t / Some folks just can’t be told.”

Both “Lie” and (especially) the EP’s first single, “Like a Bird,” are reminiscent of Neil Young’s “Harvest” era. The latter is a song inspired by songbirds, blissfully shuffling along while Hoffman marvels at nature. “There is a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley called ‘To a Skylark’ I was inspired by,” Hoffman explains. “In the poem, he pines to be able to sing with such natural joy as a skylark, which flies so high it is heard but not seen. I was listening to a lot of Joni Mitchell and my friend Jules (Sea of Bees) and thinking that they get close to singing in that effortlessly untethered way. Singing is a joyful act but also one of mourning and sometimes desperation. I wonder if it is the same for birds.”

||| Stream: “The Lie”

||| Also: Watch the video for “Like a Bird”