All Music Guide
Throughout his solo career, composer and multiinstrumentalist Barry Adamson has relentlessly pursued a muse that appeared with his first fulllength solo offering, Moss Side Story, released in 1989 six full years before we heard David Holmes' This Film's Crap, Let's Slash the Seats. On that album he began composing and recording his "soundtrack in search of a film" M.O. and has, with almost each successive release with the notable exceptions of As Above, So Below and King of Nothing Hill, which were more explicitly song collections but still had that cinematic element at their core gone deeper down the rabbit hole; he's even composed scores for a number of cinematic works, most notably David Lynch's Lost Highway. Adamson's seven previous fulllengths approached notions of noir, light, dark, lounge, rock, funk, souljazz, and blues, with a gleefully morose, sleazy, and violent sense of the dramatic and dynamic. In some ways, Adamson was able to incorporate some of the work he's done as t...he bassist for Magazine, and even more so for Nick Cave's Bad Seeds, as further reference points in his journey into sound and texture. With 2006's Stranger on the Sofa, Adamson displayed his capacity for handling many of the instrumental and sound sculpting atmospherics without the help of others. He furthers that capacity here with a most delightfully sleazy, loungesodden blend of jazz, pop, rock, and spy movie/noir thriller film themes with this collection of songs and interludes, which make for the most dramatically enjoyable recording of his career thus far.And even if it is the next logical step in a journey of surprises, it goes further than anyone save himself could have ever expected. The title Back to the Cat is, in some ways a fullcircle return to the motivating factors behind Moss Side Story named for the violent part of Manchester he grew up in and the EP that preceded it, The Man with the Golden Arm. That said, those were both deeply referential (inside) works to the cinematic obsessions Adamson has held all his life, and this recording gathers the inspiration from those records, adds the heft, depth, and breadth he displayed on the songwriting albums mentioned above, and has created a far more welcoming project for new listeners. Evidence to support this is that he is actually fronting a band and touring behind it something he has never done before as a solo act. Despite playing a slew of instruments, doing the majority of the arrangements, and producing, creating, and editing his own samples, Adamson recruited some excellent help here: there's a killer fourpiece horn section, and a rhythm section featuring no less than Nick Plytas on Hammond B3 and piano, bassist Iain Ross, and a swinging drummer who goes by the name Johnny Machin. The brooding synth and drum kit, the slow, West Side Storyesque finger pops, and the snaky little oboelike phrase that commence "The Beaten Side of Town" also introduce its narrator: some back alley cross between the young hipster Scott Walker doing his best Jacques Brel doing his best Frank Sinatra singing a tune written by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, arranged by Nelson Riddle. It's a scene set in a smoky, back alley blind pig written by Colin MacInnes if he were really Hubert Selby, Jr. Uh huh. Now we're rolling. What's so utterly beguiling about this cut is that despite Adamson's obvious attempt to deliver that kind of swinger's cool in the heart of darkness as a vocalist, there isn't a thing that reeks of artificiality or artifice. It's got a wallop both musically and lyrically, especially when the reverbed guitars and the horns erupt in the bridge, or when a trumpet and some vibes are laid in the cut with only a snare, hi hat, and walking upright bass to accompany them. His last words, after a completely raucous jazzed up blues that celebrates the all the perceived lowlifes in an urban locale are: "The beaten side of town/And I'm goin down." It's a low thrum, almost a growl, as the keeper of the netherworld opens the gates to the real nightlife for the journey ahead. Adamson's protagonist is going ahead whether you accompany him or not. He knows the way, after all, even if he can't predict the outcome. But after this entrance, how can you help it?It's not all lounge, jazz, and pop, however; the staggering creep of "Spend a Little Time" announces an Elvisworshipping hepcat's rock roll into the mix as it careens jaggedly into the killer "Shadow of Death Hotel." Here funky, loping rock meets soul guitars, and a heatseeking B3 with bass and drums in tow challenges the horns for dominance. Halfway through it becomes a ballsout garage rocker worthy of Sticky Fingers before it shapeshifts again into a flutedriven souljazz groover. Who the hell needs words when you have music like this? It's a crooner's busted love song that melds Adamson's obvious appreciation of James Carr's and Memphis soul arrangements with the poetry of his old boss from the Bad Seeds, Nick Cave. The bottom line is that there are no losers here, nothing tepid, nothing less that enchanting or worlds beyond what most songwriters and/or composers are capable of these days. Check "Walk on Fire" with its fat, funky butt, wahwah, chunkachunka guitar line and stinging horns married to brazen sexual neediness in the words, and you have a hit single that nobody would dare play. Think Duane Eddy meets John Barry with Lux Interior on vocals. "Flight" is a wonderfully nocturnal instrumental with elements of Latin funk in the crisscrossing rhythms, channelshifting sound effects, and a fullon interlude into the psychosis at the heart of three a.m. decadence. Read more Less
