Track listing: (Side 1) Death By Water, Tuesday, Except for a Dead-On Girl, Burbank, California, Missing from the Township, (Side 2) July Island, Dissolve, Heartbreaks and Slamming Doors, No Dissociation, How Annandale Went Out, Chemistry, (Side 3) Look For You, Mainstreaming, Chain and Sky (Date Killer), 491, With the Rhythm of a Catfight, Both Alone Tonight, (Side 4) World In A Day, The Killer on the Kennedy, From the End of the Earth, Body, Spies in the House

It's not often that I review an actual vinyl release. And it's an even rarer event to receive a double album in a true LP format. So opening Tim Hort's latest, the 2-record, 22-track opus No Dissociation was a treat indeed! Lyrics on the sleeves, full production credits, the joy of holding something with weight, tangible in-hand while the tracklist progresses...admiring the artwork and design of Christine Forni. Just a hearty "Bravo!" all around for the artist, musicians, and entire production team involved. No Dissociation is a formidable release from head to toe. 

What jumped out immediately is Hort's 'Geography of Memory'--his use of place-based song titles, and how these locations must have become emotional landmarks during his writing process. Then you have the journey being spread across 22 compositions. No Dissociation is the rare double album that justifies its length by refusing to hurry, and no one enjoys a rushed expedition.

Rather than chasing obvious singles or dramatic stylistic detours, Hort crafted the record to unfold through a series of interconnected scenes. The songs feel inhabited, as though they were written from inside his personal memories rather than about them. Familiar themes appear (and reappear) in various forms—loss, distance, identity, and the strange way ordinary places can become emotionally charged long after the people connected to them have disappeared.

Then there's the record's sense of geography. Song titles like "Missing from the Township," "How Annandale Went Out," "The Killer on the Kennedy," and "Burbank, California" suggest real locations; and similarly, the record doesn't feel rooted in any single place. Instead, these settings become landmarks in a larger emotional landscape. Even shorter pieces like "Tuesday" and the title track carry the weight of stories that seem larger than their running times. Hort often writes as though he is documenting fragments of conversations and half-remembered events, leaving listeners to connect the dots ourselves.

My own personal joy was, upon the conclusion of the first record, cueing up the album's second half only to discover what is arguably No Dissociation's more compelling material. "With the Rhythm of a Catfight" is one of those song titles that immediately sparks curiosity, and the track delivers on that promise with a nervous energy that contrasts nicely against the more reflective moments surrounding it. "World in a Day" and the six-minute "Body" feel particularly important to the album's architecture, providing room for ideas to stretch out and breathe. By the time "Spies in the House" closes the record, the listener has traveled through a collection of songs that feel less like separate compositions and more like chapters in a loosely connected novel.

The production helps bring everything together with the utmost cohesion. Hort's songwriting remains the focal point, but the album benefits from a recording and mixing team with deep Chicago roots. Doug McBride's engineering at Chicago's Gravity Studios, along with Blaise Barton at Joyride and Rick Barnes at Rax Trax provides a professional polish without sanding away too many of the musical rough edges that give the songs their sturdy character. The arrangements consistently serve the material, allowing atmosphere and melody to coexist without either overwhelming the other.

In an era when many artists struggle to sustain attention across a standard-length album, No Dissociation takes the opposite approach. It asks listeners to spend time with it, to revisit songs, and to discover connections that may not be apparent on a first listen (or second, third, or even tenth). That ambition does not always lead to easy listening--does anyone anymore allocate enough time to fully appreciate nearly 2-dozen songs back-to-back?--but it does create something increasingly uncommon: a record with enough depth and personality to keep revealing new details long after the final track ends.