I flip through a poetry tome, as I often do, scanning syntax and syllables, seeking rhythm and meaning from the words. Wallace Stevens’ “Extracts From Addresses to the Academy of Fine Ideas” is a lengthy piece that explores art, imagination, and perception, and how all three color reality. Is what we see what is? Or is our awareness a reflection churned through a prism that is unique to us? “The law of chaos is the law of ideas,” he writes, “of improvisations and seasons of belief.” Too, he explores the impermanence of life and contemplation: “If earth dissolves/Its evil after death, it dissolves it while/We live.”
Second thoughts, second chances, and the perspective and the courage to embrace both are not second nature to everyone, sad to say.
Singer, songwriter and guitarist Dan Knishkowy, aka Adeline Hotel, initially recorded the songs of Watch the Sunflowers in 2022 with his regular crew of collaborators (keyboardist Winston Cook-Wilson, drummer Sean Mullins, bassist Andrew Stocker) but, for reasons left unsaid, set them aside. Other projects followed, including the compelling acoustic-based confessional that is Whodunnit and a mesmerizing instrumental endeavor with harpist Rebecca El-Saleh (Kitba), R&D. He returned to the project earlier this year, with the time and distance providing him with a new perspective. He revised lyrics and added instrumentation, with the new colors enabling him to unearth new truths.
The result is a suite of songs that conjure both Neil Young and, as my wife just pointed out, Josh Rouse. “Nothing,” released as a single on Monday, is a good example. The press release quotes him as saying, “While writing Sunflowers, I was fascinated by the tightrope balancing act between freedom and stability, and I think that exploration culminates on ‘Nothing’ (‘cooling in the shade of a career/what was freer?’). I also partially quote Maggie Nelson’s Bluets with the lyric ‘wondering if there was good kinds of hustlers?’, which has been a question on my mind lately, watching the line blur between the pure feeling making music, and the dubious (though not inherently sinister!) sleight of hand in the presentation of that music, hoping to be heard. To what extent does the latter erode the former? The cacophonous ending to the ‘Nothing’ suite suggests that the answer remains elusive.”
The album opens with “Dreaming,” which features a Neil Young-like guitar at its start. Knishkowy’s warm vocals cascade through the stream of visions, with “Nothing” following with its Stevens-like exploration of art and meaning (and another Young-like guitar moment). “Swimming” celebrates love’s undertow, which can both bring people together and force them apart. The atmospheric “Ego” is a hushed confession, while the gorgeous “Just Like You”—accented by a muted guitar and heavenly harmonies—digs into ingrained behaviors. “Spaces” is both lowkey and not, hushed yet as expansive as space, while the lyrics explore purposeful restraint. The album concludes with the title track, about love found and lost. “Salvation is hard to define,” he sings. Strings seep into the mix, further underpinning the mood.
In short, Watch the Sunflowers is a restrained, not raucous, outing. It’s an evocative exploration that contains many textures and hues—not splashed onto the aural canvas a la Jackson Pollack, but applied with the precise strokes of Edward Hopper. To borrow a few lines from the Stevens poem again, this time (somewhat) out of context: “And there to find music for a single line,/Equal to memory, one line in which/The vital music formulates the words.” It’s an immersive experience, Watching the Sunflowers, and one that lingers with you long after the music fades to silence.
The Old Grey Cat 