Fast forward seven years, and Stevie Weinstein-Foner is finally ready to unveil the follow-up, Wondering. Along with a team of collaborators that includes Jolie Holland, Jared Samuel, Samantha Parton, Adam Brisbin, David Ivar, Levon Henry and Joanna Sternberg, Weinstein-Foner conjures an increasingly layered sound. Folk sensibilities are this time pushed front and center, though Wondering is far more than the standard folk record, as once again the free spirit retro vibes help achieve a laidback and hopeful aesthetic. In other words, the perfect antidote to these dark days.

Lead single ‘Good Medicine’ takes the idea at face value, a prescription for the present uncertainty and sadness. “What we need is some good medicine,” Weinstein-Foner sings, though it’s what he builds around this refrain that gives the track its true weight. The layered style is fully evident, with the acoustic guitar supported by Henry’s lazy saxophones lines, and soon joined by mellotron, Wurlitzer, piano and accordion alongside lush vocal harmonies.

What emerges is far from some trite lesson in positive thinking. A song complete with all the nuances and contradictions of lived experience. The kind of song that is seven years in the making, brimming with every moment that has led up until now. A good time coloured by loss and longing. As Stevie Weinstein-Foner puts it: “I’m always reaching for vulnerability in my songwriting.”

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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

The post Adeline Hotel – It’s Alright, Just The Same appeared first on Various Small Flames.

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

The post Song Premiere: Adeline Hotel – Near You appeared first on Various Small Flames.