The Declining Winter - Home For Lost Souls (2015)

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, multilayered compositions. From the upbeat openers, ‘This Sadness Lacks’ and ‘Home For Lost Souls’, to whimsical 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’.

Tracklist:

01. This Sadness Lacks (4:59)
02. Home For Lost Souls (3:12)
03. Golden Terrace (2:27)
04. It Is Intensely Sad (2:26)
05. The Sweet Sound of North (4:22)
06. When Things Mattered (2:43)
07. Fog Forming (1:44)
08. Hurled to the Curb (2:26)
09. Around the Winding Roads And Hills (4:37)
10. The Wild Girl Laughed (2:36)
11. Summer Circuit (1:38)
12. A Field Defunct (2:30)
13. The Right True End (7:45)
14. The Full Blown West (3:06)