Adey finally follows up his 2006 debut with another slew of darkly beautiful and affecting songs
Some six years after former recording engineer Adey won major plaudits with his debut All Things Real, he’s back with a 10-song brace of reflective slocore folk that somehow manages to sound warm, intimate, filmic and expansive all at once.
It’s sober stuff - the title references the value of silence - but the songs are heartfelt and haunting rather than po-faced or vainglorious.
Adey’s light touch has worked wonders; recording in a church with vintage synths, strings, piano and little else, his deft arrangements feel as delicately perfect as a snowflake.
It’s all helped by his wobbily baritone, which hangs in a cold fog between Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder after some Hall’s Soothers and Kenny Anderson’s alter ego, King Creosote.
‘I’ve stuck a knife in a man for less’ he sings on the baleful Farewell Sorrow, an Alasdair Roberts cover wrought with beautifully wonky guitar notes, while Helena MacGlip’s haunting vocal is matched to desolate piano in Laughing, and glowing synths softly warm Just Wait Till I Get You Home’s finger-picked guitar. One for the long, cold nights ahead.
4 stars
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