Adeline Hotel is never static. Dan Knishkowy is always in motion, searching for new places to explore, new pathways to wander. His latest, Whodunnit, is unlike anything Adeline Hotel has previously done, on the surface anyway. Within its tender framework, Knishkowy morphs familiar sonic realms into new forms, bringing a surprising, engaging album to life. The story of Adeline Hotel continues to be written, holding what came before close before letting go and moving ahead. Whodunnit is a gentle-yet-heavy next step.
Whodunnit will be released on September 27 by Ruination. Pre-order HERE.
As always, I like to start at the beginning. What are some of your earliest memories related to music and sound? Was there a lot of music around when you were growing up?
There was always music of some kind—my dad is also a fingerstyle acoustic guitar player, so that was the sound of my childhood. I remember this CD in our house that I used to listen to when I couldn’t sleep, called The Mirror Rejoices, which is all instrumental guitar pieces, and I think that unknowingly formed a lot of how my brain hears music.
What inspired you to pick up an instrument and start playing, and eventually writing your own songs?
I started on piano and then switched to drums before eventually guitar later on—my high school bandmates who I wrote my first ever songs with are still my best friends, and run the label with me!
So this new record, “Whodunnit,” isn’t so much a new direction, and while it doesn’t necessarily sound like any other Adeline Hotel records, it also feels like there are small parts of so much of your previous work embedded throughout. Can you talk about how this album, and the idea for it, first came to you?
Thanks, I’m really glad you pick up on the little embedded moments that reoccur. I definitely try to approach each album as a chapter within a larger body of work, so I often reuse lyrics or recall certain motifs in multiple songs and albums to tie these threads together. For example, the intro to the opening track is pretty directly connecting this “songs”-based album to my instrumental records, like Good Timing. And then there are certain themes and characters that pop up across the catalog which I think are especially prevalent in this record. For example, people seem to keep noticing the “cartoon dog” lyric, which appears in both the title track and “Egg On My Face”.
The latter song was the first one I wrote, as part of an exercise in this Phil Elverum songwriting class. My writing process is almost entirely based around finding a central thesis or idea for an album and then spending a concentrated period of time writing toward that album concept. With “Egg On My Face”, I knew I had that north star immediately.
The songs poured out extremely quickly and stream-of-consciousness. I was going through something pretty severe, and it’s funny to me that half of the songs were written immediately before, almost as a premonition of what was about to happen—I think songwriting draws a lot of unconscious thoughts to the surface, and in hindsight, it’s clear that’s what was happening. I wrote the rest in the immediate aftermath, and they were really necessary for me to process and move forward without bitterness or resentment, but with joy and connection.
And how did all the various sound worlds you’ve explored in previous albums and tracks influence this new record?
For a record to feel right to me, it has to both fit into the body of work and also explore something I haven’t tried before. ‘Whodunnit’ is far more of a vocal-forward approach than I’ve done, I think. I had to fight a lot of instincts to make sure the arrangements honored the vocal by staying spare. For example, though very different records, “Hot Fruit” and “The Cherries Are Speaking” are both meticulous and lush in arrangement, with woodwinds and strings—I love that sound, but it didn’t feel right to adorn these songs like that. The songs are raw and demanded of me to stay that way.
In a way, I could see this album as the sequel to Solid Love, which kind of defined a certain period of my life that has come to a close with Whodunnit; these two records were made similarly as well, mostly live over a few days with my close friends, first-thought-best-thought.
You worked with a small group of collaborators on this record, and I love the sort of contrast of that with some of the more solitary themes explored throughout. Tell me a bit about the people you worked with on “Whodunnit” and how they helped shape and expand the sound of the record.
I have always viewed Adeline as a collective almost, a rotating cast of players. Winston Cook-Wilson, who plays piano, is the closest to any sort of constant—even on the records he does not play on, he is a permanent member of the Adeline world, an egoless collaborator with whom I feel a telepathic musical connection. Sean Mullins is the greatest drummer in the world, with an incredible ear for arrangement, and I try to make as many records as I can with him. Carmen is a longtime collaborator, an integral member of the Hot Fruit band, and a huge inspiration to me as a songwriter as well. Katie Von Schleicher engineered and mixed the record—her approach is so full of enthusiasm and support, and I could not have made this record without her. Jackie West shot the album cover and sang harmonies—singing with Jackie is one of the great joys of my life, and her voice on the title track makes the album, for me.
Can you talk about the central metaphor of the title track and your fascination with ‘whodunnit’ mysteries? How does this metaphor extend to the themes of connection and disconnection in the album?
Yes, it’s part metaphor and also part literal. When I sing, “and I put on a whodunnit”, that was just me describing my day at that moment. Getting lost in mysteries has always been my comfort, and that’s how I spent a lot of my time healing in this album, binge-watching whodunnits for hours while quietly playing guitar. I’m a fiend for any kind really, Scandi noir, quaint British, gritty Japanese, books, movies, whatever, I am down.
But the ones I find most compelling are those that aren’t so concerned with who actually did the crime. That became the guiding metaphor for the record, in a way. As an excavation of a relationship, trying to figure out what went wrong between two people, the record could easily have focused on blame—I really wanted to avoid that, and instead gain clarity about how everything is just a dialectical series of events, reacting to and causing each other; a collection of little accidents that over time became a big one. This gave me far more acceptance and relief than blame ever could have.
You start the album with the question, “How Did I Get So Lucky?” How does this sense of gratitude permeate the record, even when dealing with themes of alienation and loss?
I think that’s the most “me” song I’ve ever written—the exploratory, rubato guitar, but still within a “song” structure. I wrote it with my puppy lying at my feet staring up at me, and that lyric was just how that felt in that moment. Something beautiful about her is that she does not carry feelings of heaviness—every morning she wakes up as if it’s the happiest day of her life.
This was such a salvation to me while living through this record and I felt like that line captured how I began to feel too—the fog I had been seeing the world through began to dissipate, and everything felt new and vibrant. I’m also just so lucky to make music with my best friends, on this record more than any before
What surprised you the most about making this record?
The lightness; I assumed because the subject matter was so heavy the songs were just inherently dark, but with time and space, I hear them filled with curiosity and joy, much more than I remembered at the time of making them.
What were some of the biggest challenges with it?
The day before we entered the studio, I got news that the person closest to me in the world had cancer. The three days of tracking felt heavy and confusing, but cathartic too, and that contributed to the immediacy of how the record sounds.
Now, as it’s being released, I have to say it has been challenging to revisit the subject material and in such a public way. But I value it too—it’s a good measure of understanding where I was then and where I am now.
To close, what are your favorite sounds in the world?
Breaking a Yorkshire Peppermint Patty close to your ear; Bert Jansch’s acoustic guitar; Shelagh McDonald’s voice; my dog’s little sighs when she is dreaming; the electric lick at 10:10 in Sandro Perri’s “In Another Life”; hearing my friends’ new music for the first time.
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