Hollie Kenniff’s second LP for Western Vinyl, We All Have Places That We Miss, is a chorus of cloudlike synths, seraphic strings, humming drones, and reverb drenched shoegaze guitars, all melding into an impressionistic story of remembrance, loss, family, and connection. The album’s 2021 precursor, The Quiet Drift, landed on Bandcamp’s Best Ambient list alongside the description “Drawing on the deep tones of drone, dream pop harmonies, and new age’s bright tranquility, Kenniff evokes the forests, lakes and rivers of her past and present surroundings with a zen patience.”
Here on Places… she strides even further into reminiscence, seeking and commemorating the fondly tragic ache of half-remembered locales lost to time: A grandparent’s dim living room decorated in the tropes of a vague decade; a lonely clearing beside a trail we can’t be sure if we walked or just dreamt; the calming light of footage captured years before we were born though our feelings insist we were there with the actors on set. Born from bouts of insomnia, grief, and bittersweet familial recollection, We All Have Places That We Miss transmutes Kenniff’s mnemonic glimmers into a transcendentalist sonic kingdom that can be revisited time and again, standing squarely among the pedalboard auras of artists like Windy & Carl, Adam Wiltzie, Julianna Barwick, and Grouper.