Dan Knishkowy’s latest Adeline Hotel album, It’s Alright, Just The Same, feels something like the musical equivalent of Fredrick’s words. Produced by Will Stratton, the record is undoubtedly about sad and melancholic things, though almost indirectly so. It’s as if it’s written from a comfortable vantage point, where everything can be viewed in context and with a certain degree of fondness. But, rather than fall headlong into the nostalgic-hindsight trap, Knishkowy clings to the edge and faces upwards, forwards, using past strife as an energising force to colour the present. Opener ‘Oh Well’ is a good example, a slow-burning, almost ironical song about looking back and moving on and ending up being yourself, culminating in a frantic, joyous instrumental.

“I’m going back
Always going back
Can we ever go back?

When you move somewhere, you can be anyone else
But I’ll probably just be myself
Oh well”

As we described when premiering the song, ‘Near You’ is upbeat and carefree, with “a faint sadness linger[ing] between the chords… a gentle melancholia which makes you thankful for what you have and have had”. ‘Lay Low’ has a Molina-esque sparsity while ‘Disarray’ is a bona-fide country song,  loneliness and work woes compounded by a lingering longing for lost love, despite it having been a source of disturbance at the time. ‘So Recognizable’ confronts this problem, the lunacy of missing out on the present because of worries about the past or future.

“Missing all these moments when I’m gone
Every time I hold my breath too long
I always loved away the present tense
Moments just as means to other ends”

If ‘Oh Well’ took a cynical view of the narrator’s position, then ‘My Friend’ serves as the opposite view, a sincere telling of a friend’s trouble, because nothing ignites our belief in hope like the suffering of a loved one (“There’s nothing I can do to help him if he won’t / Let love in a little”). ‘Wonder Why’ is rooted back in the personal, lost amidst a relationship gone sour, longing for the day when the mess can become one of Fredrick’s rose-tinted fantasies (“Then one day we’ll look back and laugh / Til then recoil with no face to the past”). The finger-picked guitar on ‘Magnolia’ ticks over like time itself, the lyrics shocked that seasons pass, though closer ‘Reciprocal Ages’ manages to find a moment of clarity, the aforementioned looking forwards, as though everything preceding this moment was merely a prologue.

“We talked of Big Nothing forever
You laughed when I told you my name
Surprised that I made you feel better
I said “it’s alright, just the same”

It’s Alright, Just the Same is an album of conflict. Conflict between old and new, here and there, him and her. A conflict between the past and the future with the present caught in the crossfire, hopes and heartbreak old and new swirling the narrator’s head so that he can no longer feel the sun on his face. However, through dry humour, other people and plain old chance, Adeline Hotel show that it’s possible the air just might clear now and then, affording a clear view and the feeling that sometimes, just sometimes, this could be a fantastic river to drift along, for a while at least.

It’s Alright, Just The Same is out now and you can buy it digitally from the Adeline Hotel Bandcamp page or on CD/cassette from Wild Kindness.

Album art by Michael Steiner

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“Dark and gloomy
The sunlight almost threw me
And my guitar

Dreams depressing
They keep me second guessing
So I sleep high

When I get off
It’s like it never was”

‘More Stars’ is piano-driven and warm, a slow-burning ballad that sounds like a cross between DeYarmond Edison and Kalle Mattson, the joint vocals and introductory percussion feeling like the gradual dawning of some great feeling, a conviction that things are okay or at least can be, with the correct nurturing. The closing track, a beautiful rendition of Gillian Welch’s ‘Everything is Free’, begins slower and sadder but rises into something altogether more fierce, flipping between depression and anger and grim acceptance, the various stages of grief collapsed and jumbled and set ablaze.

“Everything is free now
That’s what they say
Everything I ever done
Gonna give it away

Someone hit the big score
They figured it out
That we’re gonna do it anyway
Even if it doesn’t pay”

If that wasn’t enough, Horse Teeth decided to record a cover of ‘Don’t This Look Like The Dark’ in honour of Jason Molina, a track which happens to fit in with their aesthetic really well. We’re going to take it as a given that WTD readers will already be huge Molina fans (if not may I point you in this direction?), and this cover really does the original justice.

“I thought that I’d live long enough
That the light would come shining through”

The Horseteeth EP is out now, including on cassette via Bad Looks Records. You can grab it and the cover of ‘Don’t This Look Like The Dark’ from the Horse Teeth Bandcamp page.

Artwork by Michael Steiner

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Well the good news is that It’s Alright, Just the Same, a new Adeline Hotel record, is set to be released this coming May via Wild Kindness. Knishkowy says that the album is about “the balance between people and place; the desire for change and the need for stability”, promising the same curious blend of adventure and nostalgia present on his previous releases. In preparation for the full album, we’re delighted to share the first single, ‘Near You’.

Produced by the ever-excellent Will Stratton, the song possesses the same warm intimacy as those on How Strange It Is To See, managing to capture the strange beauty unique to new sights and sounds. The song is upbeat, the perfect soundtrack for an early-evening drive where the shadows are stretched and the sun is setting with a golden hue. A faint sadness lingers between the chords, though it is the comfortable kind, a gentle melancholia which makes you thankful for what you have and have had, a poignancy which serves to remind you of the glorious fact that you are alive.

“Ride, weathered and worn
All night through an Asheville storm
‘Someone Else’s Song’ on the radio
Now I know I was wrong to let you go

But I don’t want to be my home

Sleep better tonight
In the heat of red moon light
Whatever we are, whatever we’ll be
I used to live near you, you used to love near me

Another war, another sea”

It’s Alright, Just the Same is set for release on the 13th May on Wild Kindness.

Photo by Chris Bernabeo, album art by Michael Steiner

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The album opens with ‘All I Want’, a lush blend of folk and indie rock, the stark guitar warmed by Cantor’s full-bodied vocals which rise and fall from composure to vehemence and back again, creating something lonely yet fierce. A whisper, a shout. ‘Futon’ sees the guitar and bass gather momentum, providing the barroom swagger to match the drunken brashness of the lyrics, in which the narrator calls things as he sees them. Whether this is borne of clarity or anger is unclear, and indeed the momentum wanes by the final lines, as if his conviction drips away or else he begins to feel sorry for its target.

“Washed out of your clothes
Toothpaste and filtered smoke
You walk back into the cold
Howling and alone”

‘Catch and Release Pt. I’ is a mellow love song which segues into ‘Pt. II’, where the electric pulse of bass hints at an eventual climax, growing into a storm of percussion and Cantor’s howled vocals. ‘Call Out’ has a real Magnolia Electric Co. feel, isolation and sadness and fear wrapped within smart writing and swirls of instrumentation, fuelled by the insistent dread of self-doubt and bad feeling to produce something keenly honest and cathartic, yet always coloured with wry self-referential lines about that very process.

“Freakin’ out and I’d like to incinerate my dread
But I’ll fashion a metaphor instead
Like fastening a bomb to our bed
And grieving long before we’re even dead
I should reiterate this is all in my head

I leap from where I stand
I’m falling in, I’m falling in”

‘Bare Light’ is short and succinct, a rapid clatter of percussion and cryptic lyrics, while ‘Wild’ emerges wistful and wishful, the memories of a caged animal ghosting across some half-forgotten landscape. ‘I Could Fall In Love With Silence’ has a sad swagger, Cantor channelling the heart-broke strut of Otis Redding in a song which ebbs and flows from melancholy to affirmation to faraway dreams and round again. The album closes with the title track, which returns to (and expands upon) the opening song in what could either been seen as an epilogue or a direct link back to the beginning, enabling the record to be played in a continuous cycle. Either way, the track continues Cantor’s careful use of strong imagery and metaphor, invoking importance and meaning from words and phrases which might seem overwrought in other hands, and sees what is possibly my favourite writing on the album:

“Time pulls the tide with the moon for hands
While whispers incite my love again
Cacophony glides on ships to the sand
While whispers incite my love again

The dog howls ignite to the sky from the land
While whispers incite my love again
A pinhole of light is all god can command
While whispers incite my love again”

You can buy A Whisper, A Shout now from the Minor Moon Bandcamp page.

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“[How Strange It Is To See] 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”

It was a release that left me with questions, and Knishkowy very kindly agreed to answer a few of them.

Hi Dan, thanks for speaking to us! Congratulations on the release of How Strange It Is To See. I saw you played a release show in a winery?

Thanks! Yeah, a solo show in Pittsburgh, where I recorded these songs. Then we’re doing a full band thing in Brooklyn this week (with Wake the Deaf fav, Ben Seretan).

As I mentioned in my review, the EP was created in the midst of a move, written in one city and recorded in another. Did you intend to write the songs as a direct reaction to the relocation? Or did you just find your life coloured your writing?

There wasn’t much intention at first. I’d been writing songs for a new record, and like most people I know, had developed a love/hate thing with New York. It felt like a good time to try somewhere new for a bit. I was messing around with ‘Everything Is Going To Be Fine’ and the other 3 came out very stream of consciousness. That’s rare for me and I wanted to capture them on record the same way. Quickly and immediately. They’re all in the same key and feel more like one song written from four narrators’ perspectives, so it felt right to put them together in a concise format. To be honest, it’s a bit weird listening now, especially being back in NY, because they are of a very specific moment.

What would you list as the main influences on your writing? Would you say other musicians have had the biggest impact? Have novels/poetry played a role too?

Writing, definitely Jeff Tweedy….people like Neil Young, Elliott Smith, Jason Molina who have this duality of solo acoustic and blown out rock band. On guitar, British folkies like Bert Jansch and John Martyn. Lyrically, Chris Porterfield [of Field Report] is in another world; he completely changed the game for me in terms of what I thought I wanted out of songs.

Honestly, I struggle to break out of familiar points of view, so literature hasn’t found it’s way into the songs yet, but it helps my approach to writing – stuff like Flannery O’Connor, Borges, Murakami, where the seriousness is propped up by an absurdist element. The more fucked up the funnier it is. With music, I just always take shit too seriously. Something to work on.Coming from a background strictly in the written word, I’m always fascinated by songwriting. Having to marry the two strands of music and lyrics from scratch seems like such a difficult task from the outside. How do you go about it? Do you fit the music around the lyrics or vice versa? Or is it some middle ground that only a musician could understand?

Hah, well I’m fascinated by your writing — I feel like we get to cheat because a good melody can pull the weight when the words don’t and vice versa, but every line you write has to stand on it’s own.

Most things start for me on the guitar, but I keep notebooks and iPhone notes to draw from for when that happens. I trade lyrics from song to song a lot, though not always on purpose.

Some of your songs seem pared down to the bare minimum (I’m think of ‘Left on Jewel’ in particular), with a pretty clear narrative condensed into a few short, poetic verses. Do the extended versions of these stories exist in your head, and you distil them to fit into a song? Or do you choose words and imagery more instinctively, allowing the stories to emerge, for you as well as the listener?

I’ve been making a conscious effort to write more concisely. Restraint is such a beautiful thing, but not one of my strengths at all. I usually overwrite (like seven verses for a three verse song) and then edit down. Sometimes the best lyrics aren’t really part of the story and need to be left out, which is a bummer.

I see you are releasing a run of cassettes with Lily Tapes & Discs, who we have covered a few times in various guises. How did this come about? I’m almost completely ignorant when it comes to this sort of thing – did you approach the label? Did they come to you?

Ben Lovell, who runs Lily, is actually an old childhood friend. He taught me about Elephant 6 when we were 12 and I probably returned the favor with something like Through Being Cool. We’d been out of touch for years but started seeing each other at shows in NY and the timing worked out. His own music as Lung Cycles is so great too.

Why did you decide on tapes rather than CD or vinyl? It’s something I’ve thought about a lot recently – if physical releases aren’t the primary method of listening anymore, have they become strictly aesthetic things, nice things to put on a shelf?

I do most of my listening digitally (no streaming, just the old iPod classic), but I buy vinyl at shows. There’s still a level of independent music that’s healthy enough to sell records and make a sustainable income, but for everyone below that level (musicians and labels) it’s become about just connecting with people. There’s been a shift towards limited edition releases, tapes, lathe cuts, etc. which I think is fantastic. With digital music beginning to feel valueless, giving someone a lovingly handmade artefact puts personal value back into that relationship, even if they only play the songs via the download. I love collaboration, so with Ben and Lily that means tapes. He did the art and I think it’s beautiful.

Finally, could you name 4-5 acts you are currently enjoying? Old or new, popular or obscure, whatever you find yourself returning to.

Adrianne Lenker’s a-sides is an everyday listen; The Weather Station, especially last year’s EP; so much Mitski; Will Stratton’s ‘The Relatively Fair‘; Evan Dando’s Baby I’m Bored. I’m biased because I play in her band sometimes, but Johanna Samuels is truly one of the best songwriters around.

You can buy How Strange It Is To See now from the Adeline Hotel/Lily Tapes & Discs Bandcamp Pages.

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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 gone

That 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 times

I 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

‘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?

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The EP was written in one city and recorded in another, born during a time when Knishkowy was packing up and settling down and dealing with all the emotional stuff that comes with moving home. This feeling certainly comes across on ‘Red Coat’, a song all about the mixed feelings of moving on, a buzz of excitement and far-off regret bathed in a nostalgic sepia-toned light. Channeling Blood on the Tracks-era Dylan as well as Jason Molina and Small Sur, 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:

Wore your red coat on the balcony
A little light for this time of year
If I keep answering all these questions about why I’m leaving,
I’ll probably be the last one here

L train’s not running late again
It’s every other weekend now right?
Probably rather walk it anyway
I told you I love this city at night

And I was thinking over it again
Not satisfied with what I find
These months alone are better spent
In the present, not on your mind

The EP will be released digitally the first week of August, so expect a full review later in the summer.

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