Photo: Tash Cutts & Samuel Travis
After nearly a decade-long hiatus, London-based four-piece Adult Jazz made a triumphant return in January unleashing ‘Dusk Song’, a track full of brooding beauty. Today, the quartet of Harry Burgess, Tim Slater, Steven Wells and Tom Howe announced the release of So Sorry So Slow, their eagerly awaited full-length album. Described as containing some of their “most abrasive but gentle, beautiful and melismatic work to date”, So Sorry So Slow encapsulates a spectrum of emotions including “romance, panic, devotion and remorse, threaded together by an intentionally laser-focused love.” Imbued with a sense of urgency and introspection, the upcoming record intertwines personal narratives with ecological concerns.
So Sorry So Slow was recorded over several years across various studios in London and also in the band members’ flats, at Konk, on the Isle of Wight and in Sussex. Speaking about it, Harry Burgess says:
“We started writing in 2017 and began recording in 2018. We genuinely thought it might be finished in 2018! But things kept developing and, having resolutely not struck while the iron was hot, there was no real external push to rush things after that, so we just kept letting things shift and unfold until it felt right. Listening back to my voice notes it’s nice to notice that there are fragments of ideas from the whole period 2017-2023 which have shaped the record.”
Against a backdrop of ecological uncertainty, the album’s themes emphasize the importance of love, both for the earth and for each other. “Once we started writing, the ideas about unsustainable personal relationships, loving unevenly and heartbreak conflated with a more expressly ecological regret”, Burgess explained. He continues:
“Like contending with big feelings of loss, endings, beauty, desolation, and with how much joy the earth contains in it. Feeling so much gratitude bound up in waves of sadness. Maybe witnessing a slow-motion goodbye to all that, or its last gasps. I love the earth and the life it supports so much. I love how ecosystems fit together – even the brutal stuff. It may be basic to say, but now is the time to be laser focused on that love. I was thinking about human centrality on earth, us as the ‘main character’, the way that is served by faith and romanticism, and the subsequent disingenuous understandings of our position in the ecosystem, as only stewards somehow, rather than subjects. “
The album will see the light of day on April 26th through Spare Thought and ahead of it, Adult Jazz have shared a new single called ‘Suffer One’, featuring a string arrangement by Owen Pallett. Of the track, the band says:
“We recorded the cello and guitar together at Konk, with no-metronome, to get a loose shifting rhythm – then spent time adding splashes of other things in the studio. The final stage was Owen Pallett’s string arrangement, and viola + violin playing. We’ve been listening to Owen’s music since we were 15, and have always admired their songwriting so we were incredibly honoured they were up for it. The strings lent this final surge of energy that helped us feel it was done.
The song itself is about romance and seeking connection- and the sometimes terror baked into that. It was one of the earlier tracks the lyrics were completed on, and it ends with a bit of pathetic fallacy indulgence, which I think in hindsight teed up a lot of the conflation of the personal with the ecological in the rest of the record.”
With its lush instrumentation and heartfelt lyrics, ‘Suffer One’ is a powerful and poignant track cementing Adult Jazz’s status as one of the most incredible and innovative bands in contemporary music. Listen to it below.
