Back in June we premièred ‘Red Coat’ by Adeline Hotel, the first song from Dan Knishkowy’s new EP How Strange It Is To See. In the piece we told you to expect a review of the release later in the summer, and that time is finally upon us.
Knishkowy started How Strange It Is To See in one city and finished it in another, writing while packing up an old home and recording while barely out of boxes in a new one. It’s unsurprising then that the release revolves around ideas of letting go of familiar places and faces and embracing new ones. Opener ‘Everything is Going to be Fine’ sees the narrator still holding on to an old love, waiting for some form of communication and wondering if they are now sharing their life with someone else:
“I heard you’ve been living with someone new
It’s no wonder when your rent is so high
Do you still wear the coat that I left for you,
When I was in a hurry to catch that plane on time?But everything is gonna be fine
When leaving was the last thing on your mind”
‘Left on Jewel’ starts on a similarly morose note but soon develops into something brighter, the upbeat second half almost akin to The Cave Singers’ jaunty folk. While the lyrics are still concerned with a lost love there is a shift in tone, as if the narrator has moved past holding out hope, now able to look back with fondness without being needled by the sharp pains of regret. The writing is free from animosity and full of clarity and too lovely not to quote in full:
We left, caught in the eye of the storm
Making music of lovers with things that we’d known
Through the snow and the rain, through the bibles of our days,
We sing to what’s goneThat night we became almost “you and I”
From the station to Jewel, you were beaming inside
Til the light of the dawn,
We followed evening’s song there to simpler timesI swore off the city, I swore off the lights
Could’ve sworn that what wasn’t best was what I left behind
But I swore to myself
When it was time to take that right and leave that night
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‘Red Coat’ fits into this sense of enlightenment too, as if the imminent move has triggered a new view of everyday circumstances. As we said in the première post: “The track exists within that small and fleeting pocket in time and space that opens just before you take off from a familiar location, everyday objects taking on new importance as the seconds tick away and your surroundings can be seen outside of the context of your own unimportant worries and wishes”.
The EP closes with the title track, a sparse, finger-picked folk song which bursts with surprising volume at all the right moments. Here the narrator stumbles across his old love weeks before leaving, and while things threaten to slip into their old ways, it seems his mind has been made up, changed. “You ask when I’ll be back / Allure, attack / And I answer with a drink”, he sings. “Tried to make it last for what we had, not what we have / For what we lack“.
You can buy How Strange It Is To See now from Bandcamp, and I believe the good folks over at Lily Tapes and Discs are releasing a cassette. And, if you haven’t already, why not check out Adeline Hotel’s first album, Leave The Lights?