Five stars
Like a pulp fiction auteur, Barry Adamson has been laying bare his soundtrack inspired brand of after-hours sleazy listening for more than three decades now. With a back-story that saw him come crawling out of punky, funky Manchester as bassist with divine fabulists Magazine before taking things to extremes with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Adamson has long left those old gangs behind. Stepping out of the shadows, he has become a maverick loner and one-man nouveau rat pack with ever-expanding widescreen ambitions as he continues to remake and remodel classic soul-funk big band bump and grind in his own retro cool image.
So it goes with Cut to Black, Adamson’s tenth solo affair, and his first since the publication of the first part of his memoir, Up Above the City, Down Beneath the Stars. It is his first outing too since his soundtrack to the documentary, Scala, which tells the story of London’s ultimate outsider cinema. In a parallel universe, such a long lost emporium of larger than life after hours dreams would be screening the big pictures dreamt up by Adamson for the ten short stories disguised as show tunes that make up the new record.
Things kick into life with the horn-laden bounce of first single and album trailer, ‘The Last Words of Sam Cooke’, a first person reimagining of the true story that led to 1960s soul legend Cooke’s untimely demise. This sets the tone for a decade hopping stew of noirish narratives, from the 1950s B-movie clip joint thrust of ‘Demon Lover’ and the gospel chorales of ‘These Would be Blues’, to Blonde on Blonde era Dylan on ‘One Last Midnight’ and a Tom Waitsian routine on ‘Amen White Jesus’, while the title track possesses the panoramic big beat bravura of Serge Gainsbourg.
Despite its pick and mix reference points and stylistic trappings, Adamson makes all this his own on a giddily upbeat collection awash with Runyonesque wordplay illustrating a set of immaculately turned out private investigations. Only when ‘Was it a Dream?’ ends with a jolt does reality bite beyond the pocket-sized confessionals.
For the final reel epilogue, ‘Waiting for the End of Time’ opens with a wind sounding so desolate you can all but imagine the breezeblock wasteland Adamson wanders through en route to enlightenment. As Adamson comes in from the cold for some serious ruminations on life, death and the whole darn shooting match, and as piano flourishes cascade over the song’s funereal rhythms, pop philosophy has rarely sounded so hard-boiled. As our hero wanders off into the night, only the cliffhanger promise of a sequel awaits.
Cut to Black is released in May on Barry Adamson Incorporated.
Barry Adamson appears at King Tut’s, Glasgow on 31stMay as part of a UK and European tour.
ends
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