Hogg, Liz

***For her sophomore album—Goodbye World Hello Something—alt-rocker and guitar player extraordinaire Liz Hogg devised a rigorous songwriting routine, though you’d never know it listening to the 10 songs that compose the cycle. Utilizing a slew of idiosyncratic rules, Hogg, a Brooklyn-born songwriter and classical guitarist, wrote these 10 lush tracks over 20 days between September and October 2024. The results speak for themselves: the music is breezy and lived-in while the lyrics balance playful and existential in equal measure. Starting from 283 song snippets, which Hogg refers to as “kernels,” the artist methodically categorized these ideas before settling on 10 from a group titled “Acoustic Digital.” From there, Hogg set more rules in order to really focus on craft, one of which was that each song had to be written in two sessions. This way, as Hogg put it, “a purer message was transmitted.”