Harry Hochman’s Oh Michigan unfolds like a long drive through the corridors of memory, where the scenery blurs between what was and what remains. It’s a record that feels both restless and rooted, steeped in the kind of storytelling that doesn’t chase resolution, it just keeps tracing the road, mile by mile, until something inside loosens. Across six songs, Hochman offers not just vignettes of his past, but the emotional cartography of someone learning to make peace with the passage of time. His voice carries both grit and grace, the kind that doesn’t need to impress, it simply knows where it’s been.
The title track sets the tone with gentle inevitability. “I’m going home again,” he sings, not as a promise but as a quiet confession. The melody rolls forward like a slow train through late summer air, surrounded by dandelions, cherry blossoms, and the ghosts of places he once called home. There’s both ache and acceptance in his phrasing, a sense that he’s not chasing nostalgia but trying to meet it on new terms. The guitars glisten, the organ hums low and warm, and Gia Ciambotti’s harmonies brush through like the scent of an old memory suddenly remembered. When he repeats that refrain, “finding my way back to Michigan,” it feels less about geography and more about spirit. It’s a homecoming of the heart, tender and slightly unfinished, the way all returns must be.
From this warmth, When She Blows sweeps in like a force of nature, literally. Written during a desert windstorm at Burning Man, it is perhaps the EP’s emotional centerpiece. The string trio by The Accidentals transforms it into something cinematic, almost mythic, as if the weather itself were singing back. Hochman personifies the storm as a woman of beauty and destruction, her presence impossible to resist. “Ride your own ride,” he insists, a refrain that sounds like both surrender and survival. The rhythm builds and releases with the cadence of a storm passing overhead, leaving the ground cracked but breathing. It’s a moment of reckoning: love as weather, desire as inevitability.
Then comes Take Me As I Am, a track that lifts the EP into open-air optimism. The beat steadies, the guitars gleam, and Hochman stands a little taller in his self-acceptance. “Take me as I am, not as I was,” he sings, his tone neither pleading nor proud, just sure. It’s a song about meeting yourself where you’ve landed, no longer at war with your own reflection. The arrangement mirrors that clarity: clean guitar lines, steady drums, a melody that knows how to move forward without rushing. If the first two songs look backward, this one faces the horizon.
The pulse of DynaGlide picks up that momentum and turns it into motion. It’s a road song, full of dust, wind, and unspoken philosophy. Based on a true story of riding through an autumn storm in the Utah desert, it captures the spiritual freedom of movement, the kind of freedom that’s cold, dangerous, and deeply alive. “Even the worst day on a motorcycle is better than the best day at the office,” he states, and you can almost feel the desert air hitting your face. The percussion hums like a running engine, the guitars cut through the mix like headlights in fog. There’s an undercurrent of rebellion here, but it’s quiet, reflective, the rebellion of someone who has chosen his own rhythm, even when it leads him into the storm.
Claire de Lune drifts in like moonlight after a long drive. With accordion sighs and soft harmonies by Ciambotti, it’s dreamlike, almost cinematic. The story of two friends who met at a Berlin rave and found love despite the odds becomes something larger; an ode to connection itself, fragile yet luminous. The French refrain, le chantement de Claire de Lune, echoes like a lullaby from another life. It’s sensual without indulgence, sentimental without sugar. You can feel the warmth of the night, the pull of memory, the shimmer of something quietly eternal.
Closing with Maybe This Time, Hochman shifts from reflection to release. The rhythm here is intricate and restless, the drums flickering beneath playful guitar licks. Yet the song feels oddly liberated: light on its feet, almost hopeful. “Maybe this time we don’t talk it through,” he sings, choosing peace over persistence. It’s not a song of resignation but of quiet maturity, where acceptance feels like a kind of joy. The melody glows, the tension dissolves, and the EP lands gently where it began, between yearning and grace.
Oh Michigan feels less like a cycle of breath: inhale, remember; exhale, release. Hochman doesn’t simply look back, he listens to the echoes, lets them travel through him, and turns them into song. Between wind and memory, he finds that home isn’t a place to return to, it’s the rhythm that carries you forward, no matter where you begin again..
