PREMIERE: Adler Hall - (Tourist)

Laura Kerry

Parentheses are useful tools. They represent a whisper, an interlude in time, or, by the implied aside, they draw attention to space. In Adler Hall’s new album, parentheses do all this and more. (Tourist), the artist’s debut full-length and first full release under that name (he put out an EP, 2013’s Circumambulate, under his given name, John Henry Hoagland), exists in liminal spaces. Surrounded by field recordings from Japan and Brooklyn, where Hoagland lives, the tracks flow from one to the next, building a lush story space out of conversations, ambient noise, and the thoughtful compositions of the artist’s “bedroom orchestra.”

Weaving a coherent thread through (Tourist) is an observational narrator reporting from experience at a slight remove. He talks of struggling “To make conversation / Land in all the places that we’d rather be / Than New York” in the jaunty rock verse on “Half”; he sings, “If I keep my voice down here / You know that I’m a tourist here” in the London cathedrals of the gorgeously meditative “Tourist, Pt. 1”; and he hedges on the synth-pop-infused “Cicada,” “I’ll be here for hours / If you stick around / And make me think I’ll be alright.”

But Adler Hall doesn’t hedge when it comes to writing and production of the album. Calling on his college studies in music theory and composition and the production help of Odd Gift Records’ Kyle Joseph, Adler Hall has crafted a beautiful and polished work. An album about moving through unfamiliar places, (Tourist) instantly welcomes listeners into its own rich space.

PREMIERE: Adler Hall - Half / Tourist Pt. 1

Laura Kerry

Perhaps an equally useful conversation topic for 20-somethings as what we studied in college is what we wish we had. As we wander further from the time when our only expectation was to learn, what shape of lens do our minds form? With what tools do we wish we were armed?

Adler Hall—better known as John Henry Hoagland, or to friends (among whom I count myself, for full disclosure), Henry—studied music theory and composition, but he could just as easily have studied English. Perennially thoughtful, Henry approaches music like a text, carefully constructing themes and imagery in the signifying space between music and words. In his first EP, Circumambulate, he orchestrated five quietly beautiful, impressionistic tunes that approached meaning as the album title suggests: walking—or rather, gracefully ambling—around the perimeter.

If the John Henry Hoagland of Circumambulate explored ideas, Adler Hall seems to lean more towards narrative. On “Half,” the story of a night, the song moves in a graspable arc from sparse, bouncing rock bass and percussion to a swell of trumpet, flugelhorn, trombone, and euphoric vocal melodies. Lyrics such as, “Struggle to make conversation / Land in all the places we’d rather be than New York,” concretize the story’s space with an approachable specificity.

Despite the personal nature of the story in “Half,” it’s “Tourist Pt. 1” that embraces a more aching intimacy. Ebbing and flowing over the heartbeat-like pulse of bass in a verse-chorus pop structure, but invoking the measured intelligence of composer Adler Hall’s bedroom orchestration, the song builds toward the chorus, “Nothing is holy / Nothing ‘round here, not my skin or your name.” Hitting on the satisfying intersection between poetic imagery—Homeric lotus-eaters and the catacombs of London cathedrals make an appearance—and tangible narrative (“Rest your face against my collar”), Henry exercises a literary mind. With these two gorgeous new songs and more to come in late summer or early fall, though, let’s be glad he opted for music.