Inlet

Despite its maximalist guitar texturing and extra-epic song lengths (half of its tracks sit above eight minutes), Inlet hardly wears out its welcome.

The overall weight of Inlet isn’t out of character, and in a way it can be seen as a channeling of their own sound through some of the bands they have influenced over the years. Hum are now a prime example among the bands from their generation that have made good on unfinished business and shown there are different ways to have longevity in music.

To its general credit, this music doesn’t really belong to 2020, but neither is it a ‘90s time capsule: it’s a Hum record through and through, and its assurance as such is far more exciting than talk of timeframes, expectations or comebacks. Hum are right here.

Here’s the real gut punch though: Inlet, the first Hum record in 22 years, is better than it has any right to be. In fact, it’s excellent. It’s what all reunion albums should strive to be. Inlet doesn’t necessarily play it safe, but Hum do play to their talents – while avoiding bizarre experimentation that has made other acts look like tourists in the towns they helped construct.

What sets Inlet apart from its predecessors is not that it is heavier, more able to take advantage of hooky vocal melodies, more sonically adventurous or more organically produced — those dimensions were present on albums past. Inlet is not a powerful album because it does more. Inlet is powerful because it exudes grace.

It feels like a new blueprint for what a band “reunion” should look and feel like: one worth every moment of waiting, and created not because the band could make more music, but because they should.

The inscrutable shoegaze legends return with a towering reunion album, their first in 22 years. Unexpectedly, it is their most emotionally accessible music yet.

Returning after decades of studio album silence, Hum tries to reintroduce their classic sound with some added bells and whistles, but falls quite short.