Black vinyl, CD and download/streaming available now from our Bandcamp page
‘LAST APRIL’ TRACKLISTING :
- Eyes On Mine
- Last April
- Lime Tree House
- Mother’s Son
- My Greatest Friend
- August Blue
Bonus digital-only tracks :
7. One Year
8. When The Wind Blows, I Hear Your Voice
Far below the candyfloss, stadium-filling pop-pap, the saccharine sentiments, the airbrushed idealism, the depthless, vacuous transience of social media, there’s the music that MUST be made, words that MUST come out, regardless of whether anyone is listening. The artists who make these songs voluntarily exist in the shadows, away from the noise and the spotlights; for it is here that an integral tranquillity allows them to reflect on the unvarnished reality of human existence.
The Declining Winter’s Last April is not a heart-on-your-sleeve record. It does away with the sleeve and goes straight for carving a heart on the arm. An album which emerged out of a period of shock, grief and trauma, its six songs were all written on the same night and form a stately tribute to a loved one lost. Most of us have been here, of course – these are universal themes – we all experience loss, grief, heartbreak and we all have our own ways of coping. “It doesn’t get better, it gets different” a friend assured me in the wake of my own father’s passing and no truer words were spoken.
While their previous album (2023’s Really Early, Really Late) was lush, ornate and featuring a wide array of instrumentation, Last April strips things back to just Richard Adams’ plaintive voice and acoustic guitar, alongside the beautiful, irrefutably melancholy string arrangements/playing of Sarah Kemp (Brave Timbers). There’s been no attempt to plane off any rough edges – here and there, the creak of a chair, a guitar note missed, a voice almost cracking with emotion – these recordings are like cathartic scrawls in a diary. Only this one has been left out for anyone to read.
Following in the tradition of emotionally raw albums – Nick Drake’s Pink Moon, Songs: Ohia’s Didn’t It Rain, Red House Painters’ Down Colorful Hill come to mind – the space in between the notes is just as important as the notes themselves. As with his previous band, Hood, Adams has a way of evoking a particularly pastoral, English melancholy, of lonely morning hikes in inclement weathers, of rain on slate in the West Yorkshire streets where he was raised and still lives.
Last April is a monument to a loved one, a monument that, much like stone, will outlive us all. There’s comfort in that and in that, whoever might hear it, they might feel a little less alone. This is an album that exists simply because it has to.
‘Last April’ is available from the official The Declining Winter official Bandcamp page
Note : this album as released in a limited edition run of 100 clear vinyl, 200 black vinyl, CD and download/streaming.
Responses to Last April
“Its limited palette of spindly acoustic guitar and banks of waterlogged strings is a strong vessel for Adams’ hushed voice. Six songs, each of a piece, each sodden with an earthy, drowsy melancholy” UNCUT
“an album of delicate layers, intricately woven together through personal storytelling. Fans of Talk Talk, epic45 and July Skies should dive right in” SIC magazine
“the perfect example of the combination of sadness, hope and love that music can capture perhaps more effectively than any other artform”. KLOF mag
“as if the autumnal melancholy of the Hood era had found substance and dense representation, connected to the themes and experiences, even painful ones, of adulthood” Music Won’t Save You
“a profoundly special record that should remain a go-to place of solace for many years to come for its listeners and creators alike.” Freq
“barely over a half-hour in length, but there’s no mistaking it for a minor entry in Adams’ oeuvre” Rosy Overdrive
“an album both bleak and beautiful, cathartic and almost uncomfortably personal with just a glimpse of hope amongst the sadness” Norman Records
“a subtle beauty, which knows how to caress like newly fallen autumn leaves.if you like Hood, Piano Magic, Talk Talk and Dakota Suite you will appreciate this album”. De Subjectivsen
