Spectreview: Adeline Hotel – Solid Love

Adeline Hotel’s Solid Love turns gently and passes like a cool breeze, providing a momentary escape from enclosed spaces.

-RED-

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In a moment of worldwide slowdown, it helps to find music that reflects such a stasis. Adeline Hotel’s newest record turns gently, like the passing of an equinox, rarely rising above 90 bpm. In the low din of dusty alt-country licks, twinkling Wurlitzer and alto saxophone, Dan Knishkowy and company hit that sweet spot between serotonin-laced Americana a la The War on Drugs and the undercurrent of depression that Wilco so often capture. Perhaps it’s less substantive content-wise than either act, and Knishkowy’s vocals might be an acquired taste at first, but it’s hard to complain with music that sounds this unashamedly gorgeous. Knishkowy and his band pull out all the stops, whether its adding flute trills to closer “Takes A Long Time,” touches of upright piano on the foggy “In A Way,” or cranking the opening title track into a slow-building early highlight. The entire record operates in this emollient mood, and its best moments, the Chris Cohen-like mini-epics “Slow Love” and “Trace“, fit that mood on principle, like aural manifestations of passing clouds over a grove. The word is escape: a window to wide open spaces, and better times.

Recommended for leaves in motion.