the declining winter: home for lost souls

The Declining Winter is the brainchild of Hood co-founder Richard Adams. Home for Lost Souls is his fourth full-length album following Goodbye Minnesota (2008), Haunt the Upper Hallways (2009), and Lost Songs (2013). Pulled from a hostel that Syd Barrett was alleged to have stayed at in the early '70s, 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."