Premiere: Haux Shares New Track “Hazel”

Premiere: Haux Shares New Track “Hazel”

New album Blue Angels Out March 8 via Ultra Records

07 March 2024

By Caleb Campbell

Photo by Sayer Mansfield

Tomorrow, singer/songwriter Woodson Black is back together Blue Angels, his second record under the Haux moniker. Black debuted in 2016 with his EP, Everything We Knewand released his first full-length album, Violence in a quiet mindin 2020. Blue Angels finds him teaming up with producers Thomas Bartlett (Taylor Swift, Florence + The Machine, Sufjan Stevens), Maxwell Byrne (Mallrat) and Aug E. Rose, exploring immersive and layered soundscapes and cultivating lyrical meditations on topics such as addiction and spirituality .

As Black describes, “This album is about beginnings… It says you've got to start somewhere and this is as good a place as any. I think sometimes in this Hollywood life we ​​live now, in our pursuit of always looking good we forget what it really means to feel good. We get distracted with social media, shopping, worrying about the world, to-do lists – you name it, I've done it. This album captures the distraction, the slow process of waking up to my life and finally remembering how to feel like myself again. Blue Angels it's a reminder to everyone that every day is a beautiful place to start.”

Today, ahead of the album's full release, Black shares an early listen of the record's closing track, “Hazel,” along with an accompanying video, premiering with Under the Radar.

With “Hazel” Haux retreats from the record's lively early singles, inhabiting a soft and spectral instrumental palette that never rises above an intimate whisper. The track is largely driven by an ever-present acoustic chord progression, softly shaded by touches of piano and the barest hint of percussion. In this stripped-down setting, Black's voice glows with a primal intimacy, filling the track with airy harmonies and glassy beauty as he details a deeply personal quest for peace: “Boy I miss Hazel / I'm sorry I put you through hell / Say so tell them you love them / And try to forgive yourself”.

Black says of the track, “'Hazel' is pretty much the story of this album, written in three parts over three years, lasting a total of three minutes. It's like my own personal walk for (inner) peace and a place to give thanks for this season of my life. It's a story I've written over time, so as the lyrics change, so does my perspective, and in the end I'm new. I am the old me and the new me at the same time, in the same song. I didn't plan for it to happen this way, but it turned out to be a cool moment for the record.”

Check out the song and video below. Blue Angels out March 8 via Ultra Records.