With a title like 'Blooming Roses' you might expect the CD cover to feature a photo of colourful flowers but instead there's a black and white shot of a rainy street. As it turns out this is a fair reflection of the content. In mood, it's like the way you feel when you've planned a day on the beach or relaxing in the park only to wake up to find its too wet and overcast to go anywhere.
Hoekstra is based in Nashville but has more in common with Elliot Smith's reflective (anti) folk than with mainstream country.
The tunes are slow and subdued, to the point that Hoekstra sounds melancholy even when the lyrics are relatively optimistic. The cello that undercuts lines like "Ho ho ho- hey hey hey - Everybody's looking for a better day" ('Gavin Geist) is typical of the way hints of jollity or joy are neutralised.
Hoekstra's voice can best be described as restrained, it never rises much above a semi-whisper as if he's singing in his room and afraid to disturb the neighbours. The songs are personal narratives of people and places; pleasant enough up to a point but they don't really grab you.
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The sound is fleshed out with quite a broad range of instrumental backing including clarinet, accordion, pedal steel guitar, ukelele, organ and toy piano. It sounds polished but also so tight and self contained that you can't help wishing they'll cut loose and get a little more crazy. Only on the R'n'B groove on the penultinate track - 'Part of the problem, Part of the Solution' - does the pedestrian pace shift a gear before slowing down again for the final track.
These songs seem to adopt a introverted tone as if to infuse them with a sense of depth and wisdom but the word pictures are never vivid enough to draw you into his world. A record strictly for rainy days and Mondays.
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