Like a sweet spring breeze after a long, cruel winter, Cory Hanson’s blowing through town again. And like the wind, I Love People — our lone wanderer’s fourth album, out July 25 — comes from parts unknown. Need a ride? Long as you’re ready to find yourself wherever it dies down, jump on! The first single, “Bird on a Swing,” arrives today with a music video.

Followers of Cory’s twin arcs as solo singer and Wand member will be intrigued to learn that the lineup here is the same band that recorded last year’s Vertigo: Robbie Cody co-producing behind the desk, Evan Backer playing bass and arranging strings and horns, Evan Burrows on drums and percussion, and Cory on piano, guitars and voices and songs. Here though, the simmering shades of his past solo works — Pale Horse Rider’s quiet horror and the burst of Western Cum’s cartoonish, gun-slinger bravado — give way to an ever-more impartial view of life on the ground, tinted in gossamer sepia and other nostalgic tones. Written over the past several annums, Cory’s songs ensnare the 70s singer-songwriter in a feedback loop, drawing additional inspiration from the indelible everyman melodies of the American Songbook. I Love People’s songs are rendered with immediacy and a deep-pile Hollywood production sound that radiates affluence and comfort, even in the darkest and coldest nights way out beyond the range of any signal.

Paired with a black-and-white bottle glass music video, “Bird on a Swing” paints our earthly paradise at its most beautiful: an FM radio oasis with a hazy mid-tempo smooth groove, strummy acoustics and other fibrous strings glittering in the breeze. An angelic choir harmonizes in the distance before Cory’s lyrics unfold: “I've rode on the darkest range / I've worked a thousand graveyard hours / I have no blood left in my veins, I gave it all up to the empire." If it’s true that we were exiled from the garden, then where are we right now? As is so often the case, soft-sounding music can be used to swaddle the hardest human truths.

Even though their subject won’t stop squirming, Cory and his merry men have constructed a timeless still life with I Love People, simply by living for the fun and love of it all. Just like the rest of us! The people-lovin’ bandwagon rolls up on July 25, 2025.

Cory Hanson 2025 Tour Dates

July 29 - San Francisco, CA @ Kilowatt
July 30 - Arcata, CA @ The Miniplex
July 31 – Aug. 3 - Happy Valley, OR @ Pickathon
Aug. 3 - Seattle, WA @ Black Lodge
Aug. 5 - Boise, ID @ Neurolux
Aug. 6 - Reno, NV @ Holland Project
Aug. 7- Pacific Grove, CA @ Pop & Hiss
Aug. 8 - Los Angeles, CA @ Zebulon