The Declining Winter – Haunt The Upper Hallways

Haunt The Upper Hallways is all a-clutter, traipsing across wakefulness and sleep, blurry night-time scenes, tiredness clinging to the eyes. Themes orbit around melancholy and desolation just around the corner, wry self-awareness floating in the background, and a general brittleness. The sound is bound in partial electronics (distended and bent and played backwards sounds, occasional beats) and stringed instruments (violin, acoustic guitar, bass), with hushed breathy vocals. Hood is/was a British sibling duo of Chris and Richard Adams (as well as various other musicians here and there), and Richard Adams has gone on to perform under the name The Declining Winter. They generally played scraps of electronic experiments, longer formed versions of same, with an indie pop/rock underpinning, and perhaps their most well-known album was Outside Closer where they collaborated with some of the Anticon collective.The dark snowy scenes that act as The Declining Winter’s album covers are very apt, the strangeness of snow covering once familiar places, white pitching out in the dark, the incredible sense of loneliness (which can be comforting as well as terrifying); well can be imagined walks through the edges of forests and suburbs in such a scene whilst listening to Haunt The Upper Hallways, stabbing yourself with regrets and other painful memories, cold and hot at the same time, blurred snow banks, orange streetlights, deadened winter forest. Not a happy album, then. A very private one too, the swaying of ‘Where The Severn Rivers Tread’ sounds extremely insular, loungey drumming, whispery voices coming from various points, almost ghostly but maybe more half remembered memories than white-sheet ghouls. The backwards looping, patient bass and far away oboe in ‘Carta Remix’ is the defining track on the album, by far the longest at six and a half minutes it lulls you into a half sleep that feels as much defeated resignation as it is comforting blanket. ‘Drenched’ is a relatively brief piece but perhaps one of the stand-outs on the album, whoozy clarinet/keyboard/synth ambience in minor key, and a ticking thump-thump-thump of a drum that feels like someone banging their head against a wall over and over and over. This dark melancholia is a cousin to that of Dark Captain Light Captain’s sound, especially on the more percussive and finger-picked tracks like ‘Come On Feel The Willingness’ and ‘Goodbye Lights Ls28’, light and airy in some senses, but darkly cloying in others.The album is quite sketch-like in appearance 32 minutes over 10 tracks with mostly short lengths, but this is something Hood used to do a lot and I've long since learned to love that aesthetic. Unless you’re in a depressed mind-set, or a fan of Hood, a lot of what’s here could well feel tedious, but meeting it at the right time and letting the atmosphere take over, you can see just how well Richard Adams has done here. Be sure to seek out Goodbye Minnesota, The Declining Winter’s first album from last year, for more of the same. 75%The Declining Winter on MySpace