Peter Adams - I Woke With Planets In My Face (2008)

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Whenever I get a press release in the mail that describes a band as sounding like The Beatles or Radiohead I sigh to myself and consider not listening to the album. It seems like whenever rock musicians are asked to describe what they sound like, somehow one of those bands is mentioned almost every single time. If you play a guitar, you sound like the Beatles. If a keyboard: Radiohead. So, imagine my chagrin to receive Peter Adams’ album in the mail the other day, accompanied by a brief description citing Adams as sounding like both The Beatles and Radiohead. Don’t get me wrong, I love both bands. But in my experience when rock groups claim one or either as “defining their sound,” it usually isn’t the case.

And it certainly isn’t with Cincinnati’s Peter Adams.

While Adams’ I Woke with Planets in my Face could certainly cite both bands as influences, he doesn’t sound like either. What he does sound like, however, I happen to like a lot.

The album opens with “In the Great Green Room” a slow building instrumental track that starts off with some twinkling keyboards and violin before diving headlong into dirge territory with an eerily spooky accordion. The short introduction to the record almost sounds like it belongs in the soundtrack of a spacey fantasy movie – the kind of song during the opening credits of the film that seems innocuous but actually contains tiny elements that foreshadow the weird thrills to come.

The rest of I Woke is a journey around ghostly acoustic folk, dancing gypsy violin, and across the ivory (keyboard) keys with Adams as your guide. He’s a starry eyed whisperer who is as comfortable singing about astronomy as he is relationships. While his voice seems constantly affected with a sense of melancholy, in a Sufjan Stevens way he isn’t depressing to listen to. Probably the cheeriest track on the album is “Annabel Lee” an accordion and kazoo laced love song that actually ends quite badly (Annabel dies). The mood, however, is optimistic with Adams vowing heartily to “pierce the sun and speak the ancient tongues,” amongst other things. The meaning of his lyrics isn’t always immediately apparent, but like the lyrics of Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeff Magnum (another of Adams’ listed influences) they merit a deeper inspection.

“Ziggurat” is an interesting jam. It begins like an Eighties inspired synthesizer track and adds in some fluttering violin to guide the song through sonic peaks and valleys. At its most intense there is something almost demonic about the frantic sawing at the violins, but before it all goes over the top Adams’ reigns it all back in with a plaintive wail that turns the heat down. This dichotomy of turning it up and back down shows up time and again throughout the rest of the record. In one of the better tracks, “The Observatory” it almost sounds like Adams’ has a whole orchestra at his disposal and is guiding their enthusiasm along like a maestro, pulling it forth and sending it back with a wave of the hand. Even when the intensity is relatively staid, as it is in the shanty “Ghost in the Fen,” the complexity of the instrumentation is such that the listener never gets bored.

Adams is coming to the Twin Cities on November 7th to play at both St. Paul’s Turf Club as well as Minneapolis’s Clapperclaw Festival on the 8th. Attend the show if you want to hear something beautiful, something orchestral, and something with enough pop to taste sweet. But don’t come expecting The Beatles and Radiohead. CULTURE BULLY