Eric Hirshberg – Second Hand Smoke
Singer- songwriter Eric Hirshberg’s second full length album Second Hand Smoke (the follow up to the solid and engaging Spare Room from 2021), finds the artist turning his alt-tinged music more towards his folk pop influences to wonderful results. Hirshberg’s intense singing and instrumentation on the nine songs on the record mesh perfectly with his increasingly introspective and piercing lyrics. Hirshberg is growing as a musical artist, and it shows as Second Hand Smoke is easily not only one of the best folk albums of the year but one of the best albums of the year in any genre period.
Of the album Hirshberg states that:
As the name suggests, it’s all about getting the toxic shit out of our lives-people, substances, and most importantly, those nagging voices in our own heads…Because when you decide you’ve had enough Second Hand Smoke, next comes a deep cleansing breath of fresh air. That’s what these songs feel like to me and hope they do for you too.
For Hirshberg and his songs on this album it’s all about recognizing the universality of our emotions and experiences no matter what our respective backgrounds. All of us have to face day to day life, Hirshberg is saying, the best we can. Our collective power and sense of community hinges on the fact that we realize that not only are we not alone but also that we are not the first to ever feel what we are feeling.
Particular standouts on this uplifting collection include “Half Way Home,” “Everyone Believes,” “I Love Not Drinking,” “Unbroken,” “Day One” and of the best songs of 2024 to be heard anywhere “It’s Hard To Be A Human Being.”
It’s this last song that sums up the central point that Hirshberg as an artist is trying to say to us with this beautiful and quietly soaring record – that it is hard just living and existing on this planet for all of us and that’s something that we can and should all agree upon in these tumultuous and chaotic times where we sometimes find ourselves at each other’s throats in such quick and violent fashion. Take a deep collective breath of fresh positive air devoid of the negativity that is all around us Hirshberg is suggesting to us, and it just might change or even save your life.
Second Hand Smoke by Eric Hirshberg is now available on the artist’s website.