Mixing humour and music is always a tricky balance. Adams has judged it well on this intelligent home-produced set of retro singer-songwriter tracks with a rock edge. It has a twinkle in its eye and a well-mixed digital sound.
Label: Lone Spur Music
Time: 12 tracks / 45 mins.
http://gregadamspareidolia.blogspot.co.uk/
Mixing humour and music is always a tricky balance. If the humour takes precedence, then the music can be unlistenable – in which case, the lyrics don’t get heard anyway. If the humour is too specific, then you limit the audience or the whole collection can date, and you are back to something that nobody bothers to listen to. Those who get it right – such as Weird Al Jankovic – know how to make you smile while you enjoy the sounds.
Adams is an English language teacher, who claims that he has “found his identity in music for decades.” As a result, his lyrics are well-formed and he intuitively judges the music fairly well in this independent release.He sets the tone well with alien abduction song “Space Woman Yeah,” which works irrespective of the words. To the sounds of radio chatter, some bleeps, glockenspiel and a tasty, chilled organ solo, it is the obvious opener.
It also helps that several songs are straight, rather than humorous. Newest song “Emerald Plumes” is a lament of longing; in “Cocoon” a dissatisfied butterfly regrets being able to fly; and “Quiet Place” is about wanting a tranquil place to be with both God and his wife.
Straddling the humour and straight tracks, “Happy as a Dog” is the first love song he wrote for his wife, but is written from the viewpoint of a dog in the back of a car, his face catching the wind.
“Checkout Line” tells a story, so it keeps you guessing how it will end – the first time. Once you know the punchline, subsequent visits are less engaging. But it still has the words that you can enjoy, especially when he lists the food going through the bar scanner.
While Adams has both the right touch with his lyrics and the attention to sound, his singing is weaker, so he often takes on a half-speaking style (think Lou Reed in “Walk on the Wild Side”). He gets away with it easily on songs like the casually detached “Funakoshi’s Paperback,” a randomly-observed set of rhyming couplets (“Kung Fu slippers on / John Deere, Dear John / Michael Stipe allusion / Sleeping with your shoes on..”). This would always have a spoken approach. But it does mean that the collection loses melodic drive and by the end, the songs with lesser identities start to sound similar to each other (so you could sing “Holy Cow” over “Hair” and they would probably blend.
Overall, this is an intelligent home-produced set of retro singer-songwriter tracks with a rock edge. It has a twinkle in its eye and a well-mixed digital sound. If looking for a download, “Space Woman Yeah” is the best place to start.
Derek Walker
http://walkerwords.wordpress.com
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