A few records back, Barry Adamson opened an album with a song called "Cinematic Soul", a phrase that seems destined to go down as the best way to describe his extensive solo discography. It captures what he does at least as well as another phrase sometimes used to describe his work, "soundtracks for films never made" (he's done some actual film work, too-- see David Lynch's Lost Highway). Either way, Adamson, who's spent a fair amount of his career in music as a sideman for Nick Cave and also played bass for Magazine in the late 1970s, follows his own script in his music, trends be damned. This unfortunately means that he's likely to work forever under the radar, but it seems that, with his dark songs that spend their time exploring life on the wrong side of the tracks, he'd rather have it that way. It's harder to get away with murder in a crowd, after all.
Back to the Cat, Adamson's ninth album, is one of his most pop-friendly records, emphasizing compact, melodic songs that still bear the mark of his twin senses of humor and the macabre. It opens right in his wheelhouse, with the jazz noir gutter ballad "The Beaten Side of Town", complete with a horn arrangement topped by a muted trumpet and a flute hook. Like most of what he does, the song has a great feel-- you can sense the air between the notes, and the temperature of that air is cold. The cinematic soul tag fits like a glove, as it does a few tracks later on the instrumental "Shadow of Death Hotel". With a creeping funk beat, dramatic, occasionally dissonant horn section, and burbling Hammond organ, it's like a tossed salad of John Barry, Henry Mancini, and David Axelrod, with a number of great harmonic substitutions and surprises, including a short flute solo.
The horn section turns up on nearly every song, and the arrangements are usually inventive. "Walk on Fire" does well expanding on the feel of "Shadow of Death Hotel", coming off like the theme for a future Bond movie with its strings, horns, and dueling guitar parts, one of which drops surfy lead lines while the other cranks out a "Shaft"-y chicken scratch. Even the title sounds like something Ian Fleming would've dreamed up-- either way, it'd be a kickass soundtrack to a tense game of mahjongg with a supervillain.
In amongst all the moody material are two surprisingly boisterous pop songs, "Straight 'Til Sunrise" and "Civilization". The former matches a swinging, carefree beat and Adamson's cabaret-like vocal to lyrics about an irremediable breakup that may have crossed the line to murder-- the song also balances chilly passages topped with a police siren with an instrumental bridge straight out of Burt Bacharach's dreams, with vibes and a smooth-as-silk horn section. "Civilization", meanwhile, is a catchy pop tune that casually slips out lines like, "I wandered through a wasteland that was passing as a glimpse of Heaven's door." It's great to hear Adamson harness his talent for creating atmosphere to punchy, immediate songs like this. When he cheerfully sings "People/ They're no good" on "People", it makes an instant impression, and even when the album wanders a bit it still feels good.
