Adult Jazz - So Sorry So Slow (2024)

 

Art Pop / Chamber Folk / Post-Rock / Neo-Psychedelia

RIYL: Bon Iver, Dirty Projectors, Talk Talk

 ✪ VINYL FANTASY 

★★★★★

I've been thinking about Adult Jazz's comeback album, So Sorry So Slow, for quite awhile now, but each time I've started to write out a review or even jot down some notes about what I'd want to say about it I've drawn blanks. Maybe I could say it leaves me speechless, as I struggle to find an angle from which to approach it that would allow me to describe its incomprehensible shape. Or maybe I could make a joke at the expense of its enigmatic title, as detractors are wont to do, since it has been eight years since the release of their last mini-album and the regal compositions that comprise the new record are certainly slow: gentle and deliberate, tossing aside the noisy symphonics that championed 2016's Earrings Off! and even shying away from the band's signature grandiose climaxes that made for 2014's most exciting debut on Gist Is.

Or, since this is a music review after all, I could make an attempt to describe the music, but the things I might mention such as the improvisational fluidity of their songwriting, the feral melancholy of the blearing horn section, or the gut-wrenching vitality of vocalist Harry Burgess' syrupy yowls, but a) all of that has already been covered by their other records, and b) I can barely recall any of the melodies on So Sorry So Slow, let alone details about specific instruments, lyrics or passages. It's like I'm lifted into a trance when I hit play on opener "Bleat Melisma" which doesn't release me from its hypnotic thrall until the last note dwindles into the distance on closer "Windfarm", after which I'm left with nothing but a wispy, intangible feeling of longing as if I'm waking up from a half-remembered dream. No refrains get stuck in my head; all that come to mind when I try to recall its twisted logic are little pools of forlorn beauty that cascade away before I can grasp them from the ether.

But I don't need to be able to sing along to Adult Jazz songs! Heck I don't need to be able to recognize which part or even which song I'm currently hearing. Because I already have this… whatever this is, and maybe it's even better than those other things. Hopefully someday I'll be able to articulate what exactly I think about the album and pinpoint exactly why So Sorry So Slow is So Special to me, but there's at least one thing for certain right now and it's that Adult Jazz have absolutely nothing to apologize for (there I did it).