CREDIT: MOLLY DRAG
It's a long album, but it's arguably Michael Hansford's best work.

One of London’s most prolific underground songwriters, Michael Hansford, recently released a landmark of an album that proves to be some of his best work yet. Known primarily for fronting The Raspberry Heaven, a project that went through a number of evolutionary stages before solidifying as a three-piece emo band, Hansford decided to take on this project as the next stage in a hopefully successful career under the moniker Molly Drag.

Deeply Flawed is an album that I could tell he was excited to make and release as he spent months hyping it up before he asked me to record the final track for it. I wasn’t sure what to expect. What I ended up with was a great song recorded simply in my basement. Everything about the session for that track, “Vanity,” just fell together in unison, with little to no frustration on anyone’s end.

Deeply Flawed is a long album but is certainly an album worth listening to from start to finish. It wraps up around 74 minutes, but keeping in mind that every track has its value and placement, listeners don’t have to feel like they’re being slammed with the same thing for too long.

Even with some songs that may be similar in structure and style, the lyrics are enough to drag you into Hansford’s world for a brief moment.

As most of the album is recorded with simple acoustics, soft synths and light percussion, it’s a naked record. The album exposes a piece of him that he really wants the world to see.

Hansford, however, wasn’t without help in the creation of this album.

Somewhere along his way he met up with Jake Jackman, a garage rock enthusiast and musician who has proven that he is one of the best people to collaborate with.

Together, the two of them were on the same page about how the album was to flow, how it was to sound and how it was to be played. They haven’t known each other long, but after seeing them work together flawlessly, you’re inclined to think otherwise.

Upon the album’s completion, Hansford got a huge boost from Hellur Records out on the west coast in the U.S. Hellur Records has been actively supporting this album and are producing the physical copies to be released in the next coming months.

To glue it all together, Hansford has intentions of going out there to play some shows.

Truthfully, this album has a lot to give to listeners, and it can do well with the right amount of promotion.

For the genre-savvy, this album is largely not definable by a central style and is instead just a melting pot of shoegaze, pop, indie, ambient and post-punk. Its release marks yet another fantastic set of songs produced by London’s active underground scene.

With the enthusiasm at an all-time high for the group, you can most certainly catch them playing a variety of shows around the city and possibly even some out of town as well.

If you are interested in giving the album a listen and also checking out a couple videos that have been produced for some songs, head on over to mollydrag.bandcamp.com to experience the whole thing. If you have some bucks to chip in, it’s really worth it, but I am going to wait until a physical manifestation arrives.