Reviews
Secondhand Weather
By Dmitri Vane · Issue 42
Eleven songs of immaculate folk-rock gloom, produced with the kind of analog warmth most studios have forgotten how to buy.
The Ash Compilers have been making the same record for six years, which is not a complaint: Secondhand Weather is the best version of it yet. The core template — acoustic guitar, brushed drums, harmonies stacked like library shelves — is untouched, but the recording is warmer, deeper, more human.
There is a lived-in quality to these songs. "Harbor Fog" drifts in on a harmonium note and never quite resolves, which feels correct. "Postcards from the Flood" is the closest thing to a pop single here, and it is the better for not trying harder.
If there is a flaw, it is consistency itself: nothing startles, nothing offends. But in an era of algorithmic brightness, an album this comfortable with shadow is its own kind of radical.