In the bittersweet time capsule of hovercraft’s Blown Away, two tracks, “Angel” and “New Pine Overcoat,” stand out like a direct transmission from Charlie’s heart. The album, pieced together from songwriter Charlie “Pepper” Wildman’s lost 1995–96 recordings, the project exists because a few cardboard boxes outlasted time, memory, and the artist’s disappearance from public life after 2015.
Bassist Aaron “Ron Nasty” Downing and producer David “Golly God” Marsden used AI reconstruction and modern mastering to salvage the ghost of what once was, with jagged emotions, unfiltered intention, and the writing that never expected witnesses.
“Angel” opens with a tender acoustic guitar and a tender, soft, delicate voice singing vulnerably, so much so that you can hear her breath heaving and sighing out of her. The singer sounds like she’s trying not to break while asking why the person she loved keeps drifting “more and more and more… away.” A gentle piano moves beneath her, almost like it’s trying to hold the lyric together. But then the bridge arrives, and everything turns with shimmering percussion, thudding drums, and a glistening lift gives the confession wings. Vulnerability shifts into razor-edged resolve, and by the end, she spits a line that hits like a slap across memory, “I am gonna screw all your friends.” The song goes from ache to armor in under three minutes, with heartbreak turning into a punchline delivered through clenched teeth.
Meanwhile, “New Pine Overcoat” ventures into the twilight. As her voice drops low, grainy, and dry, like she’s singing from inside the aftermath. Rustling drums keep things moving while the guitar revs moodily below. It opens as a Gen-X celebration, “a celebration of my generation” before the optimism cracks, revealing fatalism creeping in from the edges. By the end, when hope gets thin, she sings, “So if you kill yourself, please send me a note, I will read it in my new pine overcoat,” with chilling bluntness.
Together, these songs encapsulate what Blown Away truly is, as fragile art rescued from oblivion, carrying the weight of a friend who vanished, still calling out, hoping someone answers back.
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Review by: Naomi Joan