If you’re a fan, by now you’ll no doubt have this album – his third of 2005, first without The Cardinals and with Ethan Johns back at the desk – and have your own opinions of it. If you're not a fan by now, then you’re probably not arsed what anyone thinks of it anyway! But I’m going to have my say just ‘cos I think this is a pretty damned fine and important album!
Fairly short, containing only nine songs, it starts with two tracks that perfectly showcase the wonderfully eclectic nature of Adams' art. First up is the title track ‘29’ that charges in with a great ‘chooglin’ sound reminiscent of the 70’s, sat somewhere between The Grateful Dead and Canned Heat. It’s cocksure and it struts, boasts of drinking, fighting and prison - yet it’s loaded with all the vulnerability of a young man desperate to prove his manhood while holding at bay the looming world of ‘adulthood’. Towards the end it loses control, overtaken by the kind of edginess that suggests life fuelled by a combination of amphetamine and adrenalin. It certainly has you up on your toes, expectant for what else is on offer.
What actually comes next is a shockingly beautiful contrast, ‘Strawberry Wine’, a long, dreamy, rambling waltz containing characters that inhabit a number of vignettes that swirl around each other, casually crashing in on one another’s story. Simple guitar and voice have never sounded better! It also provides the template for much of the rest of the album.
‘Blue Sky Blues’ is gorgeous, mainly piano and voice with some muted horns and strings that drift in and out. It’s mood is one of helplessness until reaching the outro when the whole thing lifts and sweeps to a heart-wrenching climax. Similarly, its ‘sister’ song the lovesick ‘Starlight Diner’, also based on piano and vocal, is bathed in sadness and lyrically full of evocative imagery, “Is it possible to love someone too much?” asks Adams, “You bet.” His own heartfelt response.
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Breaking the mould is the magnificent ‘The Sadness’. Lesser artistes might come tippy-toeing into those realms so commandingly held by bands like Calexico and The Sadies but not this guy who comes charging in, full of bravado and a mighty vision that lends his particular take on the theme such drama and intent that it almost takes on an operatic quality. Not content to merely invoke dry, dusty landscapes through a variation of the ‘spaghetti western’ theme, Adam’s version filters in aspects of Kurt Weill, Bizet, Marc Almond/Scott Walker and Miles Davis’ ‘Sketches Of Spain’. Amazing.
Elsewhere, ‘Carolina Rain’ is the most blatantly ‘country’, pedal-steel guitar dripping from it’s mid-paced tempo but, as with the best of Adam’s work, while cradling the familiar, it’s structure and arrangement is never predictable.
Production throughout is spot on and the best possible advert for the “less is more” school of thought. A wonderfully human album.
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