Adeline Hotel is the project of Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter, Dan Knishkowy. Having emerged back in 2015 with his debut album, It’s Alright, Just The Same, Dan has gone on to release a further four albums, culminating in Gold Timing, released back in February of this year. The sixth Adeline Hotel album The Cherries Are Speaking, finds Dan in a backward glancing mood, the record starting and ending with lyrics from his previous two albums. Ahead of the album’s release later this month via Ruination Record Co. today Dan is sharing the latest single from it, Lot To Listen.

The Cherries Are Speaking’s centrepiece, Lot To Listen is a song about the creative process, as Dan explains, “I wanted to explore the connotations of artistic ambition—what it means both to create and to share, the differences between loneliness and isolation“. The track is a song of two halves, at first, Dan is alone, as he sings, “it takes a lot to listen, it takes a lot to learn”. Then in the second half of the track, he’s joined by backing vocals, courtesy of V.V. Lightbody, serving as, “a narrator apart from the world, but still a part of it”.

While the music has a delightful lightness of touch, it’s also deceptively complex. The track is held together by the presence of the piano, light, reverberating flourishes giving the whole track an illusory dream-like quality, similar to Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Music For Nine Postcards, which Dan cites as a major influence on the track. As the song progresses, the piano is joined by waves of Alabaster De Plume-like woodwind, strings, and the gentlest flutter of percussion, the perfect accompaniment to Dan’s tale of learning to let go, “release my inhibitions, some things take a little while”. While it is a song about learning, there’s also a sense of being pulled back by the past, particularly in his closing words, “lonely with ambition, I could only smile, oh my god, I miss you”. Six albums into his fascinatingly eclectic musical journey, Adeline Hotel sounds as intriguing and excitingly different as ever, The Cherries Are Speaking might just make his most compelling statement yet.

The Cherries Are Speaking is out October 22nd via Ruination Record Co. For more information on Adeline Hotel visit https://adelinehotel.bandcamp.com/