I Love People

The Artist

Cory Hanson is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist best known as the frontman of Los Angeles psych-rock outfit Wand. While Wand built a reputation for dense, shape-shifting rock records, Hanson's solo work strips away the collaborative noise to reveal a more intimate, literary sensibility — one drawn toward country, folk, and the quiet end of the American songbook. His solo debut, The Unborn Capitalist from Limbo, introduced him as a writer of strange, elliptical beauty, and I Love People deepens that identity considerably. This album arrives as a clear statement that his solo voice is no side project — it is a world unto itself.

The Album

I Love People is a spare, unhurried record that leans into acoustic textures and restrained arrangements, letting Hanson's songwriting sit front and center without the distortion or density that defines his band work. The production favors warmth over spectacle — dry acoustics, close-miked vocals, and the occasional grace note of electric color. Thematically, the album moves through tenderness and irony in equal measure, using everyday figures and deadpan imagery to probe loneliness, belief, and the strange comedy of being alive. The title itself feels like a dare — an earnest declaration held up against lyrics that refuse to let sentimentality go unchallenged.

Listen For

Acoustic intimacy. The record is built on close, dry acoustic guitar tones that feel almost uncomfortably near — like Hanson is playing in the same room. Notice how little reverb separates the listener from the performance.

Vocal restraint. Hanson's voice rarely pushes past a murmur, and that understatement is doing enormous work. On tracks like "Lou Reed" and "Old Policeman," the flatness of delivery is itself an expressive choice — deadpan as a form of feeling.

Song structure and pacing. These songs resist the urge to build or resolve in expected ways — endings arrive quietly, without fanfare. Pay attention to how "Final Frontier" and "Texas Weather" use space and duration to create mood rather than momentum.

Deadpan lyricism. Hanson names his songs after icons and archetypes — a title like "Santa Claus is Coming Back to Town" promises one thing and likely delivers another. Listen for the gap between his song titles and what the lyrics actually do with them.

Closing statements. The final track, "On The Rocks," lands as a kind of summary — notice whether it resolves the album's emotional ambiguity or leaves it deliberately open. The closing track of a record this understated carries real weight.