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From the San Francisco Examiner:

San Francisco musician Kirk Hamilton isn’t shy about sharing credit for the work that went into his debut album, “The Exited Door,” a cool, stylistically varied collection of chamber- pop songs about The City.

“A lot are friends, a lot donated their time — they were willing to come in and do it,” Hamilton, 28, says of the couple dozen folks who contributed to the project, which took him about a year to complete.

The string section, the marimba player and the jazz band at the Urban School of San Francisco, where he teaches, participated.

Then, there are his co-vocalists Dan Apczynski (his former mate in the rock band Squaretape,) and Lindsay Garfield (of the alt-folk band Or, The Whale), who Hamilton claims “did all the heavy lifting.”

“I wanted to bring all the different types of music I love into one album,” says the songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, whose first musical success was as a jazz saxophonist (he earned a degree in jazz performance from the University of Miami School of Music). He doesn’t mind if his music is compared to that of Tom Waits, Sufjan Stevens, Stephen Sondheim or The Decemberists.

Still, “The Exited Door” remains a distinctly personal expression: “It’s a little autobiographical,” Hamilton says. “It’s about my early passionate rushes of music and romance. It’s songs about my experience.”

One thing it’s not is the culmination of his career.

“I’m already thinking about newer, bigger things. I haven’t made my rock opera yet!”

--Leslie Katz

Order The Exited Door:

"This is one of those rare treats that is so impeccably put together and so effortlessly charming that you’ll be willing to follow it wherever the hell it wants to take you. It’s like no other album you’ll pick up this year."

Incendiary Magazine

"Music that makes me think of a less wimpy Sufjan Stevens ... The Exited Door is chamber pop at its best."

Examiner.com

"Possibly one of the most entertaining and creative albums of 09. Kirk Hamilton weaves intricate and appealing melodies together to create a wonderfully varied track list and brings each song to life with his legion of talented San Francisco musicians."

Through The Wall

Portrait Illustration by Amira Hankin