Monday, July 29, 2013

Adam Daniel - Songs From The Wilderness

Lots of justifiable excitement about the new release from Adam Daniel.  After a 14 year hiatus, Daniel has put together a worthy follow up to 1999's touchstone Power Pop album "Blue Pop".   Coming out of nowhere "Blue Pop" was an instant classic exercising a 3 minute pop sensibility (similar to Fountains of Wayne) in a more melancholy singer songwriter setting.  

This years effort "Pop, Baby" is a long awaited return to form.   It features a mix of smart rockers and AOR ballads.   A very nice album and  a surprise after 14 years.   During that time,  Adam put out two official releases, "The Adam Daniel Frequency" and the "Where You Are EP".  Both were collections of rough sounding demos.   Some great material on these however neither was ever rerecorded and mixed  professionally.

During his time "in the wilderness", Adam occasionally featured a stream of a fully mixed track on his website.   I've collected some of those tracks in the compilation here.  The compilation features two tracks left off, of the classic "Blue Pop" album,  a b-side rocker and a number of AOR style tracks that represented a direction that Adm was exploring during that time (many of them quite nice). 

Enjoys these tracks but be sure to pick up "Pop Baby".   It's sure to end up on lots of best Power Pop lists this year..

1 These Shy Things (Early Version) - Folky version of new album track (I like this version better than the new album's)
2 Always All About You - B-side from "Dream Out Loud"
3 Finally Asleep - Bonus track from "Blue Pop".  Recently featured on SoundCloud.
4 Everywhere - Bonus track from "Blue Pop"
5 Downhill Racing - Folky track
6 Scarred - R and B Track
7 She's Elegant - Folky Track
8 Home To You - Folky Track
9 Come Alive - Track from Adam's side project the Flutterbies
10 When It's Over 
- Folky Track
11 These Shy Things - Solo acoustic demo of new album track