David Hobbes

“I aspire to being madly authentic,” singer-songwriter David Hobbes says. On his forthcoming debut album Searching for a Home, his songwriting is by turns tender and clever, often within the same song. There’s diversity in the instrumentation and musical styles, but never for ornamentation’s sake alone.

In the stories of his songs, you can hear his evolution as a songwriter and a human being. He doesn’t pretend he had the answers all along. Even when he dips into escapist fantasies like “We Are Wild,” the lyrics serve to further a real-world situation. It’s apparent that Hobbes doesn’t just aspire to authenticity so much as he can’t escape it.