If these decisions were made on the back of quality and creativity rather than marketing muscle, Barry Adamson wouldn’t just be taking care of the next Bond theme tune, he’d be scoring the whole film. Unfortunately, media and record company politics will ensure that we get another substandard cruise singer instead, and it’ll be everyone’s loss. Adamson’s soulful lounge jazz with grit and filmless soundtracks often suggest the legendary Lee Hazelwood fronting post-jazzers Get The Blessing with plenty of dark comedy, and Know Where To Run shows that after a 30-year solo career, there’s plenty of good stuff yet to come.
Mr Moss Side Gory’s latest opus opens with “In Other Worlds”, a Suicide of Western Culture-like instrumental that mutates from a church organ melody into some heavy John Carpenter atmospherics with a driving groove. From here, diverse influences break in from all directions without upsetting a coherent musical narrative. There’s the groovy psychedelic soul-jazz of “Death Takes a Holiday”, the crooning of “Claw and Wing” and the gritty, dirty funk of “Texas Crash”. There’s even “Up in the Air”, the closest that the ex-Bad Seed and Magazine man has come to anthemic in a long time, and an acoustic ballad of sorts in “Evil Kind” that suggests that there does exist some kind of redemption within his film noir world, as Adamson declares, “The scars that define me are fading away”. However, given that he also claims that “I’ve got a killer to my left, a killer to my right and a solid gold ticket to the end of my life” on “Cine City”, it could be a while before his particular muses and demons exit stage left.
Know Where To Run might be music for grown-ups but it’s certainly not music for squares.
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