"Shadow Of Death Hotel," the first of two instrumentals, is so deadgummed hip you gotta wear shades to listen to it, a eminently catchy chunk of organic funk-jazz underpinned by a rhythm guitar, acoustic bass and drums setting the shuffle. The horn charts come straight out of the Mike Hammer theme and a short, climatic bridge briefly shifts the song into hard-driving rock before returning to the original, stone-cold groove.
The other vocal-less track "Flight" is nearly as clever, blending eery electronic sounds with echoes of Tommy Dorsey's band, like dance music for ghosts of the swing era.
"Walk On Fire" with it's chugging, wah wah'ing guitars pacing a syncopated beat, owes as much to Isaac Hayes as it does to sixties spy thrillers. "People" finds Adamson in a playfully philosophical mood amongst a sea of strings and even a steel guitar.
If there's anything holding this record back it's Adamson's own vocal. Oh, he can belt 'em out alright, but sometimes he carries that lounge singer act to the point of shtick; the over-emoting on "I Could Love You" and "Psycho-Sexual" bring those songs down a notch. The cheery "Civilization" succeeds in using rousing gospel as a backdrop for an unsavory charactor thrown in jail, but he seems unsure how to end it. The song peters out suddenly with a whimper leaving the listener high and dry.
These minor shortcomings aside, it's hard to dismiss Adamson's sweeping aspirations when he has grasped nearly everything that he reached for.
Adamson combined all this into a thematic collection of songs he wrote, arranged and produced in a way that share that common cinematic feel. This, in spite of all the change-ups in tempo, subject matter and influences. All of which make Back To The Cat a singular product in a crowded field of pop albums today.
Using the term "pop" very loosely here, of course...
Article comments