Home For Lost Souls by The Declining Winter (Review)

With Home For Lost Souls, The Declining Winter continues to explore the shambling, pastoral post-rock territory initially mapped out by the late, great Hood. Richard Adams’ vocals are as strained, whispery, and world-weary as ever, and the layers of delicate acoustic guitar, shuffling percussion, strings, piano, and electronics create the perfect daydream-y soundtrack for early spring, when winter’s chill can still be felt but there’s definitely a thaw somewhere in the air.

On “The Wild Girl Laughed,” Adams sings “The wind is our guide” — an evocative lyric that’s apt considering the free-flowing, drifting sounds that Adams and the rest of The Declining Winter make so well. This is unassuming music, but music that haunts you nevertheless with pictures of distant countrysides and equally distant memories. As such, I have a strong feeling that Home For Lost Souls, along with its companion EP, The Waning Mill Chronicles, are only going to continue to haunt me as 2015 unfolds.