Wanted to get the New Year started on a high note? Well, consider the sonic introduction to Adam Spry — a brilliant indie-folk songwriter based out of San Francisco, whose debut album “Slightly Off Kilter” is coming out March 24th (self-released).
“Rotten Mausoleum” is the first advance from that album. Accompanied by an incredible and quite unforgettable video, the track really makes an impact with its perfect combination of raw pop and lo-fi-retro-feeling indie rock vibes. It almost immediately sent us through an old record journey to try to understand from where the sonority sounds familiar. After a while, it did not matter after all. The way it drives us with energy and makes us feel possessed by a strange but quirky creativity is all that matters.
Perhaps it’s in the big guitar compasses that the whole thing produces the biggest amount of love, but the vocal elements while sounding safe and familiar are a perfect mix of storytelling and indie-rock vibe that takes us from Beatles to Franz Ferdinand without ever truly sounding like any of them.
Adam says about it:
“Walking through the streets of Rome, I kept picturing an emperor who “went into the family business” so to speak. He just wanted to play the lute and study philosophy with his friends. Sick and tired of the class disparity around him, he decided to have the old statues torn down. He was of course killed and replaced with someone who would rule with an iron fist and was subsequently erased from history. This is where “Rotten Mausoleum” was born.”
Definitely, a fast-moving track that sings about a fast-moving society “that doesn’t have time for indecision” this is a gorgeous take on what new music is all about: writing from the insides and making the insides rock on the outsides. While at it, it always makes us dance around the room with our headphones on.
About Adam Spry
Without knowing that the world around him would soon become unrecognizable, San Francisco songwriter Adam Spry already felt off his axis and out of place. A years-long battle with depression had left him scarred and fighting to tread water in a fast-moving society that doesn’t have time for indecision. Working as a full-time musician in numerous touring bands and recording projects had left him burnt out, with a creative hole that needed to be filled. Stopped dead in his tracks by the pandemic, like so many of us, Adam began to carve out a new reality of all his time spent at home with his partner and dog.
Having time to reflect on what is important in life turned out to be a blessing in disguise. With a newfound perspective, Adam found his creative spark in the midst of the pandemic’s darkness and began writing new songs. After furiously recording demos onto a loaner 4-track cassette recorder, Spry slowly began to dig himself out of the hole and started self-recording songs that would become his debut full-length album.
More about Adam Spry:
SoundCloud –Facebook – Twitter – Spotify – YouTube – Bandcamp –Instagram