The Declining Winter Hood co-founder Richard Adams and his The Declining Winter project return to Home Assembly Music with an impressive second album for the label, ‘Home For Lost Souls’. Taking it’s name from a hostel that Syd Barrett was alleged to have stayed at in the early ‘70’s, the album’s title points to the subject matter that concerns Adams in his songwriting.
From the cost to one’s sanity at just making it through another wearisome 9-5, to the ominous beauty of the North Pennines landscape, and love in a time of austerity. But far from being austere, the 14 songs presented here are generous, warm, deceptively simple, multi- layered compositions. From the upbeat openers, ‘This Sadness Lacks’ and ‘Home For Lost Souls’, to whim…sical instrumentals, ‘Golden Terrace’ or ‘When Things Mattered’, all the way through to the outrageously catchy ‘Hurled To The Curb’ or the melancholy introspection of ‘The Wild Girl Laughed’ and the quietly epic ‘The Right True End’.
As you might expect from Adams, he wears his heart and his influences on his sleeve. At times it feels like listening to a glorious cross between Disco Inferno and Talk Talk, Robert Wyatt and even Felt, with occasional smatterings of Radiohead as well as a brief hint of PiL on the rustic, ‘The Summer Circuit’ and ‘A Field Defunct’.
But really it’s none of the above. It’s Richard Adams. It’s The Declining Winter. Only it’s better this time, that’s all.
