By today's standards Adam Irving is doing it wrong. No social media, no singles, but building a discography of highly eclectic albums. Yes, albums. His latest, Tomorrow & Tomorrow, swings from pop to rock to jazz and dance and everything in between, with his leftfield approach of the guitar as an intermediate to keep it all together. It is a textbook DIY record, with instrumentals as breather tracks between the songs in which he dissects a subject to its bare essentials.
Irving is a sharp observer and an opinionated lyricist - Hipsters is vicious and funny, following the tradition of satirists like Ray Davies and Jarvis Cocker, but also a composer with a knack for austere explorations on his guitar (Matt Stevens comes to mind). ThSeven is a gnarly dance track, although ravers need to be chemically enhanced to pull off moves that will make sense to them. Quite the opposite is the title track Tomorrow & Tomorrow, a charming instrumental in the vein of late Sixties Pink Floyd.
He is an artist who does as he pleases, with an allergy for people who tell him that he shouldn't do this or that. A true original, relying on word-of-mouth and live shows to build an audience. That might not be "en vogue" at the moment, but it never gets old.
Tomorrow & Tomorrow is released on his own label Mitten Records. Listen to Seven here.
Tracks:- Frame It
- Apple
- Tomorrow & Tomorrow
- The Water’s Edge
- Hipsters
- Nothing’s New
- Seven
- All Of The Time