Adult Jazz has announced its first LP in a decade. So sorry so slow It lands on April 26 via Spare Thought. Today's announcement comes with the release of the new single “Suffer One,” which follows the recently released “Dusk Song” and features a string arrangement by Owen Pallet. Check it out and find album details below.
“We recorded cello and guitar together in a universe, without a metronome, to get a loose, shifting rhythm — and then spent time adding splashes of other stuff in the studio,” the band shared in a statement about “Suffer One.” “The final stage was an arrangement for Owen Ballett's strings and playing on violin and viola. We've been listening to Owen's music since we were 15, and have always admired their songwriting, so it was a huge honor for us that they were up for it. The strings gave that final wave Of energy that helped us feel like it was done.
“The song itself is about romance and the search for connection, and sometimes there's horror hidden in that,” they added. “It was one of the earlier tracks where the lyrics were complete, and it ends with a bit of a pathetic fallacy, which I think in hindsight mixed too much of the personal with the environmental in the rest of the record.”
Discussing the album process, vocalist Harry Burgess said: “We started writing in 2017 and started recording in 2018. We really thought it might be finished in 2018! But things kept evolving, and since we didn't strike while the iron was hot, there was no… No real outside motivation to speed things up after that, so we kept letting things change and unfold until it felt right. Listening to my audio notes, it's nice to notice that there are bits of ideas from the entire 2017-2023 period that shaped the record. It's Complete:
I usually have things as sort of totems of ideas. The album initially started out as being about performance… [the totem] It was a head microphone, one of those thin, skin-coloured microphones, ensconced on the West End star's forehead. A number of the first songs in their original forms were piano ballads for musical theatre. I think that was really a way of writing about my life as the “main character” (paraphrasing before speaking online): regrets about romance and relationships—unsustainable relationships with self and others.
However, once we started writing, thoughts about unsustainable interpersonal relationships, loving unequally, and heartbreak mixed with environmental regret more clearly. Like struggling with feelings of great loss, endings, beauty, desolation, and how much joy the earth contains. Feeling a lot of gratitude is associated with waves of sadness. Maybe we'll see a slow goodbye to it all, or a final gasp. I love the Earth and the life it supports so much. I love the way ecosystems fit together, even the monstrous things. It may be basic to say it, but now is the time to laser focus on that love. I was thinking about the centrality of humanity to the Earth, as the “main character,” the way faith and romanticism serve us, and the subsequent disingenuous understanding of our position in the ecosystem, as somehow merely stewards, not subjects. Totems at this point: a missionary's horn, a truck's inner tubes, and archaeological tools. Think of death, industry and history respectively.
Now I would say the record is about gripping. The totems are: tapes, rope, distillation, desalination equipment, and the accumulation of various survival techniques. I think constipation sums up both issues. There is the right emotional clinging to the land that is the foundation of everything we value, or the illusory clinging to our imagined dominant position. But also the practical and technological aspects of creating a sustainable relationship and staying here. Then I think about romance again.
So sorry so slow Cover artwork:
So sorry so slow Song list:
1. Barry Melesma
2. One's suffering
3. Rod p
4. No rest
5. Plenary session
6. Marquee
7. Song of Dusk
8. Land of Wooms
9. There is no security
10. Ben
11. I was surprised
12. Wind farm
