Peter Bradley Adams (Leavetaking)

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    The Longer I Run

    Peter Bradley Adams (Leavetaking)

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    Keep Us

    Peter Bradley Adams (Leavetaking)

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    Under My Skin

    Peter Bradley Adams (Leavetaking)

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    Los Angeles

    Peter Bradley Adams (Leavetaking)

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Peter Bradley Adams Website

 


Peter Bradley Adams: LEAVETAKING
2008 / Sarathan Records
9 tracks / 32:44 minutes
Reviewed by Tobin Mueller

Recommended.

This is a quiet album. Full of ghosts, alive with echoes of deeper energies, vibrating with the vanishing lines of past and present. The music captured is pure and still and enveloping. Every track is gentle, delicately intelligent, soothing. The perfect production strikes just the right balance between clarity and warmth and made me want to re-listen over and over. This album caresses.

There is also a sense of loneliness that overhangs, an inability to shed burdens, a reticence to embrace wholeheartedly, a sense of drifting, that makes this almost a sorrowful album (in my ears). Yes, it is mediated by a generous gratitude that the journey is well worth every pain. The music itself provides faith, a beauty Peter and co-producer Lex Price capture so brilliantly, something beyond words (one of the reasons the album ends with a sweet and sad instrumental waltz, I believe). But from Peter's vocal delivery, I get the feeling that he doesn't smile much in these songs - that he loiters too easily in the meaningful places of solitude.

The album opens with my favorite tune, The Longer I Run. It speaks about being caught between hope and regret, self-creation and uncertainty, and made me feel like I wanted to follow Peter into the desert, even if he is warning me not to go. A great way to start an album.

when my blood runs red with an old red wine
I miss the life that I left behind
but when I hear the sound of the blackbird's cry
I know I left in the nick of time

the longer I run then the less that I find
sellin my soul for a nickel and dime
breakin my heart to keep singin these rhymes
and losin again

tell my brother please not to look for me
I ain't the man that I used to be
but if my saviour comes would you let him know
I've gone away for to save my soul

This is followed by the mostly ghostly song of all, a fabulous dreamlike moment, Los Angeles.

you carried us in broken dreams
like a mother does her sons
we were scattered 'cross your dirty streets
we were dying one by one
but you held us in your city lights
when our eyes had lost the stars
and we made our peace with lonely nights
and you healed our broken hearts

well they say the big one's gonna come
and you will fall into the sea
but we will know that then your work is done
and your angels will go free

When I asked Peter why he left LA and ended up in Nashville TN, his current home, he told me, "I just needed to get out of LA. I was drawn here by the music scene and I knew I was going to be recording my record here with Lex Price. And I've stayed." The poetry in Los Angeles speaks to much more than this sort of simple answer. It leaves just enough space for us to fill in our own pain, our own need for change. But what struck me most was the freeing sense I felt with the final line, as if even if disaster comes (and, perhaps, especially when it comes), we are all as winged as angels, inside.

The next tune, I'll Forget You, featuring Lex Price on banjo, talks of a man who cannot let go, who cannot hold on, caught between motions.

as the space around me grows
I need the touch of your skin
so I wear this ring of gold
til I forget you

With that almost overlooked phrase, this ring of gold, what was perhaps an ordinary lyric becomes something hard, impossible to escape. Like choices, and inabilities, and expectations. Yet, he is able to sing these words with such control, almost an emotional detachment. I want it to be an expression of the fortitude that comes from understanding, but sometimes it merely slips into resignation, this sadness.

As the album proceeds, there is something comforting yet wanting in the evenness across the subtle palette of emotions presented here. Yes, the album is an absolute success - great production, perfect playing, solid writing, coherence of audio concept across each track - yet, I long for more specific intimacy, deeper secrets, specific histories, a moment that breaks out of this singular mood, something that might uncover things I have not touched before. I am a restless listener, as Peter seems to be a restless songwriter, yet the kinship I felt at the warmth of his sound stopped short of transcending into new truths, as when I listen to Jackson Browne, David Wilcox or Sam Beam. Perhaps I am reminded too much of my own lonely places that I am unable to let go of.

Then I listen to the magnetic music and wonder why I want more than this? Moments in time, full yet less than we may need, are what life is made of. Perhaps the answer is in the song Keep Us:

when the rain set in we had nowhere left to go
so we just stayed in bed while the thunder rolled
there's a comfort in the rain, one that lovers only know
so we lay hand in hand while the water rose…

there's a lesson in the rain that change will always come
let us ride this wave and then greet the sun
and though the ground may shake and we'll think
we've had enough
we must raise our flags for the ones we love

so keep us, keep us from the storm

…and I understand the brilliant strength of this journey. Songs of leavetaking. And newfound sanctuaries.

I highly recommend this album.

 

 

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Peter Bradley Adam  -     Acoustic Guitar, Piano

Andrea Zonn  -   Vocals

David Jacques  -   Bass

Jeff Irwin  -        Bass

Lex Price -    Acoustic Guitar, Banjo, Strings, Electric Guitar, Guitar (Tenor)

Sarah Siskind  -    Vocals

Ian Fitchuk     -     Drums

Marco Giovino - Drums, Noise, Cardboard Box

James DiGirolamo  -  Organ, Synthesizer, Accordion

Melissa Mathes  -   Vocals

Katie Herzig  -    Vocals

 

Technical Credits:

Bob Ludwig -  Mastering

Jason Lehning -  Engineer

Bill Sanke     -    Engineer

Lex Price    -   Composer, Producer, Engineer

Joshua Meltzer -  Composer

Peter Bradley Adams -  Composer, Producer, Engineer