Dave Simpson 

Singing Adams: Moves – review

Steven Adams's musical career after the Broken Family Band continues with another charming, moving album, writes Dave Simpson
  
  


Steven Adams started Singing Adams after his old group, the Broken Family Band, broke up. Good Luck, the second song on this second album, could be a spirited defence of his former combo's failure to turn cult success into a means of giving up day jobs. "Damn their eyes!" he sings in the faces of foes real or imagined, before insisting that being "blindsided" by everyday existence hasn't harmed his determination to "start again instead of giving up". Moves is overflowing with such pithy, spirited bonhomie, and expands the BFB's countrified indie sound with Johnny Marresque guitars, pedal steel and pianos. With Singing Adams emerging as a more rumbustious Belle & Sebastian, the best tunes here – No Rock Song, London Trocadero – are rollicking affairs. Only occasionally do darker tensions show through, with the fatalistic Black Cloud suggesting we all enjoy ourselves because "a black cloud is coming". The stark but sublime What Happens Now? finds a lonely Adams missing friends who never call, but this charming and even moving set shouldn't see him too short of admirers.

 

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