Album Review
The opening guitars of “Waves” seem to fill the room before the song has quite begun. Their distortion has weight, but there is light moving through it: small melodic details, sustained notes and a voice that sounds close even when it is surrounded by an enormous amount of sound. That balance carries Inlet. Returning twenty-two years after Downward Is Heavenward, Hum give their music room to stretch, trusting the listener to settle into its slow movement.
Matt Talbott's singing remains remarkably unforced. He rarely pushes against the guitars, and that restraint gives the songs a human center. Tim Lash and Talbott build broad, interlocking layers around him, while Jeff Dimpsey's bass and Bryan St. Pere's drums keep the music grounded. Listen beneath the sustained chords and there is a great deal happening. The rhythm section gives these long passages direction, allowing a subtle change in a guitar line to feel as consequential as a larger shift in volume.
“In the Den” brings a particularly satisfying physical presence, its riff moving with a deliberate, heavy gait. “Desert Rambler” takes that patience further, opening out across nine minutes of dense guitar sound and uneasy space. The repetition works because the texture keeps drawing the ear inward. There is a sense of distance in this music, but also the feeling of being sheltered inside it.
“Step Into You” provides the clearest melodic lift. Its comparatively compact arrangement lets the band's gift for a memorable song come forward without thinning out the sound. “The Summoning” and “Cloud City” explore different degrees of heaviness, with the former feeling especially imposing and the latter carrying a welcome sense of motion. Throughout, Hum make distortion feel expressive. The guitars can suggest exhaustion, comfort or wonder without needing a dramatic vocal performance to explain the change.
The gentler movement of “Folding” offers some breathing room before “Shapeshifter” closes the record. The finale is one of Inlet's most rewarding stretches, allowing its atmosphere to deepen before the arrangement changes shape. Its quieter passages feel earned after so much sustained force. Hum understand how an album's final minutes can change the way everything before them is remembered.
At times, the similar guitar tones and measured tempos make the middle of the record feel less distinct than its strongest individual songs. Some passages could lose a little length without losing their emotional pull. Still, the commitment to this particular sound is also what makes Inlet so absorbing. It rewards uninterrupted listening and leaves behind melodies that emerge more clearly with each return. Hum have made a patient, powerful record whose beauty comes from the care inside all that noise.
