REVIEW: Broommaker - Hourglass

Swept away

42:15 // May 22, 2026 // Etxe

I approached Broommaker’s Hourglass without expectations or context, enamored with a charming piece of album artwork. And I’m sure glad I gave it a try, as this record is a nice little gem.

Crafted by a Washington, DC chamber folk collective, there’s something rather airy about the arrangements here, whether gentle piano, elegiac strings, or weepy pedal steel, the melancholy instrumentation feels comfortable and rather cozy. They invariably serve as backdrops to the narratives lead singer Greg Svitil churns out - he’s our gruff-voiced narrator, half-whispering sad-to-the-bone poetry. At any given time, Svitil’s delivery calls to mind Bob Dylan, Bill Callahan, Tom Waits, or Mark Linkous - all of those names serve as a recommendation, but their diversity reveals he’s not a carbon copy of any icon.

Hourglass is an album which is reliable in delivering dreamily sorrowful mood music, and is great throughout for that purpose, but it’s undoubtedly a release defined by notable highlights. The three obvious picks for me are the deeply moving “Caroline” (the track that first made me perk up my ears and say “hmmm, this might be something special”), the haunting “Written on their Arms”, depicting the generational horrors of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the sublime closer “Watching from the Wings” - each of those tracks sees the signature sound of Hourglass honed to near-perfection. The other eight songs here don’t seem quite on that level, or perhaps they haven’t hit me yet, but for a low-energy yet high-emotion listen, this is quite an album. Don’t let it pass you by.

8.0/10